


25 Days of Ficlets

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 25 Days of Fic-mas, Christmas Ficlets, Discussion of Violence, Drug Use, Friends to Lovers, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:46:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 27,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5347973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short Tumblr ficlets based on the "25 Days of Fic-mas" prompts. Will update tags as ficlets are added, since I have no real plan, except that these will not end with sadness and angst. It is Christmas, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1: Shopping for Gifts

John put down the newspaper with a small sigh.  
It was full of reminders about the upcoming holiday season, the advertisements featuring Christmas trees and red bows, the feature section promising a new listicle of gift suggestions every day until Dec. 24.  
Today’s – the first one – was “Gifts for the Man Who Has Everything.”  
Looking around the flat, John wasn’t sure Sherlock actually had _everything_ , but he was quite sure he had everything he thought he needed. The skull was in its familiar place on the mantel, the chemistry equipment was stowed neatly on the shelves in the kitchen. Sherlock might not mind clutter, but he did take care of the things that were important to him.  
The list in the paper suggested a minuscule plot of land in Ireland for £50. If he was going to buy Sherlock a small piece of land, Sherlock would rather have something in a cemetery, preferably with a body already buried there. There was a key fob with a Bluetooth tracker for people always losing their keys, the last thing a consulting detective would need. No, the last thing Sherlock would need was a collection of wooden puzzles. A hoodie with a special pocket to hold a can of beer upright. No, just no. Maybe for Lestrade? No. Really.  
Lestrade would be more appreciative of the beer itself. Maybe a case of his favorite? Mycroft would like an expensive Scotch, and John could actually afford it this year. The events set off by Moriarty’s broadcast last winter had been difficult to say the least. Devastating, even, except that they ended with John and Sherlock both back at Baker Street, Sherlock’s name fully cleared. After all the publicity, Sherlock had been in greater demand than ever, and when John reactivated his blog, his followers on the first day doubled what they were before Sherlock went away. Financially, it had been a very good year.  
Personally, yes, it had been good on balance, John thought. The beginning had been hard, when he found out his lying wife wasn’t (his wife, that was), and his unborn daughter wasn’t (his, that was). He hadn’t been sure whether Sherlock would want him back at Baker Street, but it was the only home he had to go to. Sherlock had taken him in with metaphorical if not literal open arms.  
The thing was, John wanted Sherlock’s physical arms around him. Or his around Sherlock. Or both their arms around each other. He wasn’t particular. But he wasn’t sure if Sherlock wanted that. He knew Sherlock loved him, after his own fashion. The wedding speech and the events that followed made that clear. But John didn’t know what Sherlock wanted from him, and he was afraid to push the issue, lest he damage the comfortable relationship they had fallen into when he moved back.  
John picked up the paper again, snorting at the suggestion of a personalized romance novel. _That_ would likely get him kicked out of the flat. Of course, Sherlock had always said he was a romantic.  
John stilled. Sherlock said he was a romantic because of his blog posts. He had almost a month. He could get his blog posts bound into a book, with a personal dedication. He could even make a joke of it and package it with other books Sherlock would like. Not romance, of course. True crime, the kind of sensational literature that lined the shelves in Sherlock’s bedroom. _In Cold Blood, The Devil in the White City_ (was that Holmes any relation?), _The Stranger Beside Me,_ more like that.  
John discarded the newspaper in the bin and went in search of his laptop. He had books to order. Wait, who was he kidding? Better go to the library to use their computers.


	2. Day 2: Hot Cocoa

Marching, yes, that was definitely the word for it. Some of the traits that initially marked John as military back in the lab at Barts had faded with the years, but when John was headed somewhere with a purpose, he still marched.  
John hadn’t said anything about going out this morning before Sherlock left, and it wasn’t one of the surgery days John had marked on the calendar. Yet there he was marching away from the flat when Sherlock alit from his cab. He was wearing jeans, too, so he hadn’t been called in to cover for someone who was ill. In any case, had he been going to the surgery, he would have headed the other direction, towards the tube station. John persisted in taking the tube, despite the crowd and the noise and the stiffness in his shoulder when he had to hold a strap. He could easily afford a cab to work; Sherlock made sure that half the proceeds from the consulting business made their way to John’s account, and John hadn’t had any unusual expenses. Sherlock knew; he checked John’s account at least twice a month, just to make sure.  
So John was going out, somewhere he hadn’t mentioned to Sherlock. It wasn’t the day for the shops, because John would have mentioned that. Maybe he just needed milk? No, for that he would have gone round the corner to the Tesco Express. Maybe Mrs. Hudson had asked him to run an errand? Perhaps. If she had, John would have acquiesced. Of that, Sherlock was certain. For a man who could be a bit prickly and stubborn, John’s essential nature was kind and generous, and he extended more patience toward Mrs. Hudson than just about anyone else, save Sherlock himself.  
Well, one way to find out. Mrs. Hudson really should know better than to send John out for heavy parcels on such a raw day. He’d come back with his shoulder aching and trying to hide the stiffness in his leg from Sherlock. Another mystery: John’s leg pain had returned after he realized that his wife was not who he thought she was, and it had not entirely disappeared when he moved into Baker Street this time. But John was embarrassed by it, so Sherlock never mentioned it. Why should John be embarrassed by pain?  
Sherlock set off after John, intending to bump into him at Sainsbury’s, if that was where he was going. He would hail a cab for the trip back. John would think it terrifically extravagant, but get in anyway.  
Sherlock used the walk to practice tailing a subject without being caught. He didn’t know if it was easier than usual because John was the least suspicious person in London, or more difficult, because John was so familiar with Sherlock that he could recognize him with the briefest glance. Perhaps it evened out.  
Sherlock saw John turn well before they got to Sainsbury's. They’d only been walking about 10 minutes. The Marylebone Library. Perhaps some research? But Sherlock made sure they subscribed to all the databases and journals John was likely to consult. John could access all of them from his laptop at Baker Street.  
Sherlock’s stomach sank. John didn’t want to use his laptop. He didn’t want Sherlock to see what he was looking up. That was confirmed when Sherlock lingered near the door, pretending to search his pockets for a cigarette while peering inside to see John take a seat at a computer.  
John was saving his money. John was using a computer and didn’t want Sherlock to see what he looked at. It couldn’t be anything as pedestrian as pornography; Sherlock was intimately familiar with John’s preferences in that area, and anyway, John wouldn’t go to a library for that. It must have something to do with Sherlock. Could John be thinking of moving out?  
When John appeared in the sitting room at Baker Street last spring, he had looked broken. It was similar to when Sherlock first met John, but the damage went deeper. When Stamford first brought John to Sherlock, Sherlock could see that the man was suffering from despair over his lack of usefulness. He needed to be needed, preferably doing something that got his heart rate up and his blood pumping. Sherlock had provided that for almost two years, before he and Moriarty nearly destroyed John altogether.  
Sherlock had told himself he did the only thing he could to keep John safe, but he blamed himself for letting it get that far. He had played Moriarty’s game, after all, trying to distract himself from the intrusive feelings he had towards John, and he had been a tiny bit pleased when John seemed jealous. He hadn’t realized how dangerous it was until he was on the roof, and it was too late to call it off. Even then, he hadn’t realized what his death – or his deception – would do to John. But when he returned, he found a John who was closed off in a way he had never been before, a John who said he forgave Sherlock but never offered the intimacy they once shared. A John, he had come to understand, who was afraid of letting Sherlock break him again.  
Sherlock hadn’t blamed him – once bitten, twice shy, and all that – and tried to support him in his marriage to a woman who was not entirely insipid. But by trying not to interfere, he left John vulnerable to Mary, and he was broken again anyway. So broken and so afraid, he seemed to think there was a possibility Sherlock wouldn’t want him to come home. Ridiculous.  
Over the ensuing months, John had healed, slowly. He joked more, teased more, smiled more. They became easier together, with Sherlock making more of an effort – all right, making a small effort – to keep body parts away from the food and out of the bathtub. He cooked sometimes. He ate more often, as long as John was there to notice. Sherlock had thought things were going well. But maybe John had built up enough strength to move on? Maybe 221b had been a kind of sanctuary, and it was no longer necessary? Maybe John thought Sherlock had just been doing him a favor?  
Sherlock couldn’t let John think that. He also couldn’t let John know he had been spying on him. He checked his mobile; no messages from John. That meant he wouldn’t be out long. Sherlock would go home and make him a treat, something he liked, something to warm him up. When he was happy and comfortable, maybe he would tell Sherlock what he had been doing. Or maybe there would be no need.  
He knew just the thing. When he was a boy, on cold days, when he rambled outdoors too long and returned with the cold nipping at his nose and fingers, his mother had made him hot cocoa, using milk and cream and sugar with the cocoa powder. It was one of the first things he had learned to make once he could use the stove.  
Sherlock stopped at the Tesco on his way back to get the ingredients. Sugar and a pinch of salt they had, but perhaps not unsweetened cocoa powder. Mrs. Hudson might, but better not to risk it. More milk – this project would use up most of what was in the refrigerator – and a small carton of cream. That would do.  
Once in the kitchen, he whisked together the cocoa, sugar and small pinch of salt and flipped the kettle on. He watched the end of the street from the sitting room window, and as soon as John came into view, he got to work, using a small amount of boiling water to dissolve the dry ingredients, then heating that with the milk until hot but not boiling. He was just taking the pan off the heat when he heard the door to the sitting room open, and he stirred in a dollop of cream and poured the concoction into two mugs.  
“There you are, John,” Sherlock said. “It’s a cold day. This will warm you up.”  
John took the mug and sniffed at it, a bit suspiciously at first, then with appreciation for the aroma. The steam made his cheeks, already pink from his walk in the cold, flush a little more, and Sherlock turned quickly to his own mug.  
“You made cocoa,” John said.  
It wasn’t a question, so Sherlock didn’t answer.  
“Is it poisoned or drugged? Does it have any ingredients one might not usually expect in cocoa?” John was speaking in his affectionate, teasing voice.  
Sherlock smiled a little ruefully. He supposed he deserved that.  
“No, I made it the same way my mother did when I was a boy,” Sherlock said.  
He took a sip of his before he went on. John followed suit and then gave a small moan as he swallowed. “Sherlock, this is delicious. Tell me why you’ve not made it before?”  
Sherlock took a breath and another sip before looking back at John.  
“This cocoa is something that always made me feel like I was at home, safe and warm,” he said, adding “and loved” in his mind. “I suppose having you here this year, after everything, makes me feel more like that than I have since I was a child. Like I’m home.”

_Sherlock’s cocoa recipe is something like[this](http://allrecipes.com/recipe/20211/creamy-hot-cocoa/), although it would be slightly modified because half-and-half isn’t commonly sold in the UK._


	3. Day 3: Winter Wonderland

John’s phone buzzed on the side table.  
He rolled over and reached blindly for it, swiping the screen to turn the alarm off. He pried his eyes open, then closed them again.  
It’s too early, he thought. I don’t have to work today, and it’s still dark out.  
He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.  
Two minutes later he was sitting up in bed, staring at the window.  
It wasn’t still dark – or it was, but not because it was early. It was dark because the sky was overcast, and fat white snowflakes were falling.  
John stretched his arms over his head, lay back down and pulled the duvet up. It was cold and snowy outside, and warm and cozy in his bed. He didn’t have to work, Sherlock didn’t have a case on, and there was no reason he couldn’t have a lie-in.  
Five minutes later John watched the snow fall through the kitchen window while he waited for the kettle to boil. Somehow, lying alone in his cozy bed didn’t have as much appeal as he’d expected.  
His thoughts kept wandering to Sherlock, and the way he looked when he gave John the cocoa the other day. His cheeks had a tinge of pink, his lips were damp and he looked at John with affection and something that looked like hope.  
Then he had told John how his mother used to make him hot chocolate when he would ramble too long in the cold.  
With that thought, a plan was born.  
*****  
“Why are we out here? It’s cold,” Sherlock whinged as they trudged through the gate to the park.  
Sherlock had conceded to the weather enough to switch his Italian leather shoes for a pair of lace-up boots that came up to his ankles and looked waterproof, and he wore the dark jeans that made John wish he wouldn’t be quite so devoted to his suits.  
But he still had on a suit jacket under the Belstaff – fur collar attached, John noted. At John’s insistence, he had pulled on a woolen hat and he wore his usual leather gloves.  
John, on the other hand, had on his heavy winter boots, jeans, a thick jumper and his dark jacket. A warm hat and gloved completed the outfit. Sherlock looked like a model out for a photoshoot in the snow; John looked like a boy kitted out for a snowball fight.  
“We’re going for a walk, Sherlock,” John said. “We’re enjoying the snow. You’ll get bored sitting around the flat, and you told me you used to wander round when you were young.”  
John shrugged. “I thought you might enjoy it,” he said.  
“I did not wander,” Sherlock said, with a sniff. “I explored and I observed. I looked to see where the animals took shelter, I measured the rate at which the ice on the pond melted, I noted the effect snow cover has on underlying vegetation. Wandering is boring.”  
John had been hoping for that response.  
“In that case,” he said, bending down, “let’s have a snowball fight.”  
As he finished the sentence, John let his snowball go from only a meter or so away. It exploded against Sherlock’s chest with a satisfying thwack, and John retreated to make Sherlock’s retaliation slightly more challenging.  
Sherlock’s large hands proved effective at packing equally large snowballs, but John had an advantage in aim. Within minutes, both men were covered with snow and panting with laughter.  
“Truce?” Sherlock said, his hands behind his back.  
“Sure,” John said, still keeping his distance.  
“Come along, John, and I’ll buy you a coffee,” Sherlock said, “And we can watch the birds on the water.”  
John smiled and drew closer. As soon as he was within Sherlock’s arm’s length, Sherlock reached out and wiped the snow in his hand over John's face.  
“Mycroft used to wash my face like that,” he said. “Much more pleasant from this side.”  
John grimaced before laughing. “Fair enough. I suppose I started it. Are you still offering coffee?”  
“Unless you’d rather have cocoa?” Sherlock suggested.  
“You can make some when we get home,” John said. “I’d hate to have inferior cocoa.”  
“And yet, you take inferior coffee,” Sherlock pointed out. “After that, we’ll go ice skating.”  
John hadn’t ever been a good skater. He’d only gone a few times when he was a kid. He mostly agreed so he could watch Sherlock, all lithe grace and lean lines, but Sherlock insisted that John at least try.  
After his first fall, Sherlock skated in front of him, going backwards, holding both of John’s hands to help him balance. To be honest, it didn’t take John long to get the hang of pushing off and gliding, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept skating, his eyes fixed on where their hands were joined.  
They skated that way for several minutes before John looked up to see Sherlock looking intently at his face.  
“All right?” John asked.  
“Shouldn’t I be asking you?” Sherlock said. “People will talk.”  
John laughed. “They do little else.”  
He didn’t drop Sherlock’s hands, and they kept skating.


	4. Day 4" Christmas Cards

John sat at the desk, his tongue peeking out between his lips, his pen scratching away on a bright red envelope. He finished the address he was writing, inserted the brightly colored card in the envelope, and moved it to the slowly growing stack to his left.  
He pulled another card and envelope from the stack to his right and started again.  
John had been repeating these actions for more than an hour, the mug of tea he’d brought to the table long since drained, his left hand clearly cramping, judging by the way he shook it out every four minutes. It was more than Sherlock could bear.  
“What, exactly, are you doing, John?” Sherlock asked, his voice sharp enough to hide any concern. “You look like a one-man assembly line, which entirely misses the point of an assembly line in the first place.”  
“It wouldn’t be a one-man operation if you’d help with these bloody Christmas cards,” John said. “There’s a chair right there, and a pen. Help yourself.”  
“Christmas cards? Who have you got to send Christmas cards to? And why would you send them anyway?” Sherlock said. “Nobody send Christmas cards anymore.”  
He paused a bit.  
“Do they? Why do they send Christmas cards?”  
“Because they want to let their family members and friends that they’re thinking about them and sending good wishes for the holidays,” John said. “Because they want to celebrate surviving another year. Because they want to share the joy of the season and let their loved ones know they are appreciated. Because they want them to know they care, even if they don’t usually say it. Take your pick.”  
By now Sherlock had drifted to the opposite side of the desk and was poking a long finger through John’s completed pile. He was surprised to see he knew most of the names.  
“I can see wishing Mrs. Hudson a happy Christmas, but why can’t we do that in person?” Sherlock asked.  
“We can, and we will,” John said, “and if you’re worried about the 63p for a stamp, we can leave it on the hall table.”  
“Molly Hooper, Mike Stamford, Lestrade. These are all my friends. Did you sign my name to these as well?” Sherlock asked.  
“What, like we’re partners?” John asked.  
“Well, we are, in some ways,” Sherlock said, very much wishing he could leave the last part of that sentence off.  
“I suppose,” John said. “Actually, I did say you sent holiday greetings as well – or would, if you conceived of doing such a thing – but I didn’t actually sign your name. You can rest easy. Your reputation for despising sentiment is intact.”  
This conversation was not going the way Sherlock wanted.  
“What about your army mates?” Sherlock asked, not wanting to bring up Major Sholto directly. John had never mentioned him to Sherlock before the wedding invitations were being prepared, but at John and Mary’s wedding, it was clear that John looked at the man with admiration, respect, and even affection.  
“I did those last night,” John said. “I don’t keep in touch with too many of them anymore. Bill Murray, James, one or two others.”  
“James Sholto? Have you heard from him since the wedding?” If John brought him up, surely it would only be polite for Sherlock to ask after him. “How is he?”  
“I’ve emailed him once or twice,” John said. “Physically, he’s fine. But he was a recluse before the wedding, and then he came out and nearly got killed … well, he’s more isolated than ever. But he seems to enjoy the solitude. I could never live like that.”  
There was so much to parse in that answer that Sherlock wanted to carry it away like a squirrel with an acorn, and hide it to come back to it later. Came out? Nearly killed? Was John aware of what he was saying? But John “could never live like that.” That was hopeful. Sherlock shoved the whole thing into the hall closet of his mind palace – it seemed an appropriate place – to think about later, and continued to sort through the envelopes John had finished until he recoiled with a squawk.  
“ _Mycroft!_ Really?”  
John gave him a sympathetic look. “Yes, Mycroft, really. We both owe him rather a lot. Even if the two of you fight like children.”  
Sherlock harrumphed. This distracting John business had not gone quite according to plan.  
Wait. John was putting down his pen and picking up his mug. “I need a break before I finish these,” John said. “Want some tea?”  
John was already flipping the kettle on when Sherlock said, “Not just now. I think I’ll go see if Mrs. Hudson has any cocoa powder. We’re nearly out.”  
John, with his back to the sitting room, didn’t see Sherlock purloin a blank card and envelope and tuck them out of sight under his dressing gown. Mrs. Hudson was out – which John would not find suspicious; Sherlock often helped himself to her things – and he would have the privacy he needed.  
He sat at Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen table and wrote in the card:  
 _Dear John,  
You know I don’t go in for sentiment, but this apparently is an appropriate venue for telling you that I very much appreciate your presence, and hope that you have peace and joy this holiday season, and throughout the New Year. Happy Christmas.  
Very sincerely yours,  
SH_  
He addressed it and added a stamp before taking the cocoa powder and going upstairs to add the card to John’s stack.


	5. Day 5: Ghost of Christmas Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beware angst

John bolted upright in bed, his T-shirt stuck to his sweaty back and his breath coming in gasps. His heart raced and he could hear his pulse pounding in his ears.  
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light that filtered in from the window, his mind reoriented itself. He was home, in his room at Baker Street. Sherlock was safe. He was safe.  
The dream faded, leaving only bits and pieces behind. He knew that in the dream, he was back in the war. James was there, but he had already been burned. He had been angry, John knew, angry at John, and John hadn’t been able to defend himself. Then there had been children, babies and toddlers, and he had seen the truck barreling down on them, but as he ran to stop it, to throw himself in its path, the truck just passed through him, into the children, before it exploded.  
The next thing he remembered was seeing Sherlock, bleeding out on the ground, shot in the shoulder. He had John’s exact wound, but John was the one standing over him with the gun, and Sherlock looked at him with sad eyes until the light went out of them.  
There was more, John knew. He had an impression that Mary was there -- but then Mary seemed to be hovering at the edges of his life these last months.  
John scrubbed the his hands over his face and through his hair. He wasn’t sure what brought the nightmare to him tonight; if anything, things were going better with Sherlock than they had since he moved back in, maybe better than ever. The bit about the cocoa -- that was one of the first things Sherlock had ever volunteered about his childhood. And Sherlock had said he felt like he was home. Home meant safe and cared for and, to John at least, loved.  
Maybe it was talking about James earlier that brought the war back. John didn’t often talk about his time in Afghanistan. It was a different life, and he had been a different person. But he had talked to James himself, or at least emailed with him, and he hadn’t had nightmares. James wasn’t there when John got hurt, after all, and getting to know James had been one of the pleasures of John’s time in the service.  
Well, this wasn’t helping, John thought. He was getting chilled in his clammy shirt and pants, and he wasn’t going back to sleep in the next few minutes.  
He picked up his phone to check the time. 1 a.m. Probably better than even odds that Sherlock was still up. If he was, John could have a shower, he thought, maybe a cuppa. Sherlock would know he’d had a nightmare, but it didn’t matter. If he was up, he already knew. If he was asleep, he’d know as soon as he saw John in the morning.  
Sherlock’s eyes flicked up from the microscope to John when he heard his halting steps on the stairs, taking in the limp, John’s hand clinging to the rail, the damp T-shirt and clean clothes under his arm. “I’ve just turned the kettle on,” Sherlock said. “Tea will be ready when you’re done.”  
When John emerged the sweat-slick pallor was gone in favor of skin made rosy by hot water, and he moved more easily. He took the chair across from Sherlock and took a sip from the mug that had been placed there. Perfect.  
He watched as Sherlock made minute adjustments to the microscope and jotted occasional notes. When had Sherlock learned how to make John’s perfect cup of tea? When had Sherlock started caring enough to do so? When had Sherlock become willing to let John see he cared?  
“Why did you shoot Magnussen?”  
The question that spilled from his lips surprised John. He hadn’t even been thinking about last Christmas, had he?  
“He was hurting you,” Sherlock said simply before looking back down into the eyepiece.  
“He was flicking my face,” John said, the implication that it was hardly likely to be fatal left unspoken.  
“He was hurting you because of me,” Sherlock said, looking up again. “He wanted to see how much I would take, and he would never have stopped until he broke you, or he broke me. I cut to the end. No need to let him ratchet it up.”  
“They were going to kill you. Right there in front of me, or in Serbia,” John said. “Doesn’t matter. You’d be dead. Because of me. Again.”  
Now Sherlock was staring at him.  
“No, John. No,” Sherlock said. “I was never dead, and none of it was your fault. I knew Mycroft wouldn’t let them shoot me on the spot.”  
“And then what, Sherlock? You go off to get tortured? To get killed? You leave me with Mary and a baby that isn’t mine? You know I only agreed to move back with her because it was supposed to be temporary, a few days at most,” John said. He honestly didn’t know what would happen to him without Sherlock.  
“I know,” Sherlock said. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. But I couldn’t see him do that to you. I couldn’t see you take that for me, when I know you could have taken him apart. The man was vile. I couldn’t watch him lay hands on you.”  
John looked at Sherlock. Something about Magnussen set him off, and John didn’t blame him. Magnussen made his skin crawl, too.  
"Look, I'm not blaming you for killing him," John said. "There was something about him ... but I can take care of myself. You could have died." "At the time, that didn't seem too important," Sherlock said. "I've revised that opinion." "Well, thank you for that," John said. "You are important. To me, but not just to me." “John,” Sherlock said, “you are my most important thing.”


	6. Day 6: Naughty and Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In honor of the feast of St. Nicholas ...

Sherlock paced the perimeter of the crime scene, trying not to mutter under his breath.  
Where was John?  
He should be here. If John was here, he would talk his way round the idiotic officers of the Met. Then Sherlock could return to the body, finish his examination, and, no doubt, present the authorities with the solution to the case, wrapped up and tied with ribbon.  
But John wasn’t here. This was John’s day at the surgery, so when Lestrade texted an address and said “Someone’s killed Christmas,” Sherlock was alone in the flat.  
Sherlock had fired off a text asking for more details just before texting the address to John, saying “Meet me there in 20 minutes.” Perhaps a case would be helpful in distracting John after his nightmare.  
Both return texts were unsatisfactory.  
John’s, which came first, said: “Have patients. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Let me know if you solve it first so I don’t waste the trip.”  
Lestrade’s said: “I know that you would gladly kill Christmas if you could, but you can’t kill a holiday anymore than an idea. I meant someone’s killed Father Christmas. Please come. Bring John if you can.”  
That was less than helpful. Of course you couldn’t kill a fictional character any more than a holiday, so it had to be someone dressed as Father Christmas. The costume probably wasn’t even relevant. Nothing Lestrade said would help him start the investigation, or even evaluate whether it was worth leaving the flat. But Lestrade said please, and the flat was too quiet without John, so Sherlock settled his coat on his shoulders, knotted his scarf and headed out to hail a cab.  
Sherlock arrived at the scene some 20 minutes later. His eyes darted around, looking for a John who wasn’t there, then lighting on the corpse that lay just at the mouth of a small alleyway. Scene of crime officers were bagging his hands to preserve evidence, and it was clear they were getting ready to move the body onto a stretcher to remove it.  
“Stop!” Sherlock had said. “How do you idiots expect me to investigate if you move the body?”  
“We’ve got photos,” Lestrade said in placating tone.  
“Not the same, and you know it. If you wanted me to look at photos, you could have emailed them,” Sherlock said. “You’re breathing, so there is a brain in your head. Use it. Besides, you lied to me.”  
“Oi,” Lestrade started to protest the insult, before catching up to the rest of what Sherlock said.  
“I lied? About what?”  
“You said Father Christmas had been killed. This is clearly not Father Christmas. This is St. Nicholas, the fourth century bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey,” Sherlock said. “He’s wearing robes, not boots and trousers and coat with a ridiculous hat.”  
Sherlock’s eyes lighted on the bishop’s miter that lay a few feet from the body. “Well, there is a ridiculous hat, but the wrong kind.”  
Sherlock moved to get a closer look, but was held back by Lestrade.  
“I’m sorry, Sherlock, but you’re going to have to wait til we get him to the morgue,” Lestrade said. “Father Christmas or St. Nicholas, there’s a school in the next street, and the students will be dismissed in half an hour. We need to get him off the street. Once he’s gone, you’re welcome to look at the scene all you like, if that will help, and then you can have a look at the body.”  
Sherlock paced for a few moments, texted John again (“Are you almost here?”; no response) and turned back to Lestrade.  
“Fine,” Sherlock practically snarled. He left the flat for for this? “What have you got?”  
“We got his wallet and phone,” Lestrade said, holding up an evidence bag. “His name is Arthur Lawrence, he was a solicitor, and he lived not too far from here. I could maybe let you have a look. If you put on gloves.”  
Sherlock shot Lestrade a long-suffering look -- the wallet and phone were still in the man’s pockets; what prints did they expect to find? -- and pulled on the nitrile gloves, watching Anderson and Donovan whisper together near the body removal van. As he turned away to look at the phone, Sally called, “I guess you’re going to be on the naughty list this year. Oh, wait. You are every year.”

Sherlock was watching the alley from a cafe across the street when John’s cab pulled up an hour later. When John stepped out, Sherlock picked up the coffee he had purchased for John and met him on the pavement.  
“Coffee?” Sherlock said, holding out the cup.  
“Oh, bless you, I could use this,” John said. His face and posture carried the traces of a long day on his feet. Not a bad day, Sherlock thought, just tiring.  
John took a sip without asking whether it had been poisoned, and Sherlock had to concentrate on keeping the smile off his face.  
“This the crime scene?” John said, looking at the red-stained slush and the evidence of many feet trampling any clues that once might have been available. “What happened?”  
“A man named Arthur Lawrence, who was dressed up as St. Nicholas, was stabbed somewhere around lunchtime. The actual stabbing took place further down the alley -- it wasn’t visible from the street -- and he crawled here before he died,” Sherlock said. “I came as soon as Lestrade texted, but they were getting ready to move him when I arrived because they wanted to have the scene cleaned up by the time the school in the next street dismissed the children. Lestrade said I can look at the body in the morgue, and I did get a few minutes with his phone.”  
“So we’re headed to the morgue then?’ John said. “I do appreciate the coffee, but really, if you’d texted I could have met you there.”  
“No need, I think,” Sherlock said. “I did get a glimpse of the body. The perpetrator was a few inches taller than the victim, who is about 5’11”, so a man most likely, right handed, using a sharp, unserrated blade maybe 5 inches long which is undoubtedly in the Thames by now. If that’s not enough, we can look at the body later.”  
“Then where are we going?” John asked.  
“We’re going to the home of Jennifer Barnes,” Sherlock said. “She was the last person Lawrence called, and she lives with her father in that block of flats.”  
Sherlock was pointing to a building that backed onto the alley where Lawrence met his attacker.  
“Judging from his texts to her, Ms. Barnes and Lawrence had a cordial and affectionate relationship,” Sherlock said. “He’s older than she, and the friendship did not appear to be romantic. But they may have been hiding it.”  
Less than an hour later, Sherlock and John were pounding down the back stairs of the building, chasing Jennifer Barnes’ father into the same alley where he had killed Lawrence. The man slipped in the slush and John was on with a flying tackle, Barnes’ arm bent behind his back while Barnes protested.  
“He had it coming!” the man said. “He was her uncle, my late wife’s brother. What he was doing with my Jennifer, it wasn’t decent!”  
“On the contrary,” Sherlock said. “It was your behavior that wasn’t decent. You found out that she’d met a man and wanted to get married, and you didn’t want that. So you got rid of the boyfriend and all but held her prisoner, only allowing her to go to the shop round corner, reading her texts, listening in to her phone calls. Somehow, he learned the truth, and he was giving her the money to get out, to start over. He dressed up so you wouldn’t recognize him if you were watching from the window when he met her in the street coming back from the shop. That it was St. Nicholas was just a touch of fancy.”  
Sherlock had texted Lestrade while he was speaking, and John let his weight rest on on his prisoner’s thighs while he waited for the sound of sirens. He looked up at Sherlock and asked, “Why St. Nicholas? Because he’s Father Christmas?”  
“In a manner of speaking,” Sherlock said. “St. Nicholas was known for giving gifts, which no doubt inspired the Father Christmas legend. The most common legend about his gift-giving is that he threw gold coins through the window of three girls who would have been forced into prostitution if they could not come up with dowries, saving them. The story says the coins landed in the stockings they had hung to dry, thus the tradition of Christmas stockings. Lawrence was trying to do something similar for his niece.”  
“Amazing, how you figured that out,” John said. “What’ll happen to Jennifer?”  
“Ms. Barnes will be fine,” Sherlock said. “The money Lawrence gave her is still in the flat. I told her where her father hid it, before he interrupted us. I may have added a few pounds.”  
John laughed. “First getting me coffee, then helping out that poor girl? You’re on the nice list this year for sure.”


	7. Day 7: The Nutcracker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to write something with them going to see The Nutcracker, but the idea of Sherlock in an auditorium full of fidgeting, sticky-fingered children trying to watch ballet just wasn’t working. Likely because he’d be just as impatient as them with the performance. So I went with just the music.

Sherlock was playing Tchaikovsky again. Why was Sherlock playing Tchaikovsky?

John sat in his chair, the crossword puzzle from the paper in front of him, the eraser of his pencil pressed into his bottom lip and wondered.

Once, just a few months before he went away, Sherlock had played something that was so beautiful, John had asked what it was.

Sherlock had shot him a look of disdain and said, “How can there be anyone in the world who does not recognize _Swan Lake_? Tchaikovsky. Sentiment.”

Then he’d laid his violin in his case, loosened his bow and put it in the case as well, and gone into his room. John still remembered how loud the snick of the door closing had sounded in the silent flat.

Then Sherlock was gone, and John was lost. He tried to remember everything about Sherlock, the changeable color of his eyes, the depth of his voice, the way it felt to have his full attention turned on John. He began to search out and listen to classical music, hoping to find the pieces that Sherlock had played.

It was easier than he thought it would be. Before Sherlock, one piece of classical music sounded very like another to John, despite the three years he’d played the clarinet at school. Sure, he would know the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, or hum along with the _Moonlight Sonata_. He thought he still knew the fingering for the _Ode to Joy_ , although the rest of Beethoven’s Ninth would be a mystery to him.

But in the two years John had lived with Sherlock at Baker Street, he had started to pay more attention, and the music had become familiar. As he listened to recording after recording on YouTube, he discovered that the music Sherlock played when he wanted to think was usually by Bach --- Sherlock must have admired the mathematical intricacy of it. The music he played when he wanted to show off his proficiency on his instrument was by Sarasate, and he often played the chamber music of Mendelssohn. 

And, from time to time, he had played Tchaikovsky, usually when John was in the sitting room, listening.

Now he was playing from what John suspected Sherlock would regard as the most overdone and sentimental work of Tchaikovksy’s oeuvre, _The Nutcracker_. It wasn’t the _Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy,_ but it was familiar enough that John knew it.

But to ask Sherlock why he was playing it would be to betray that John had learned something about classical music while they were apart. Sherlock would immediately jump to the understanding that John had done it to stay close to him -- to his memory -- and if that wasn’t maudlin and sentimental, and so far beyond what would be expected in grieving for a friend, John didn’t know what was.

Still, it _was The Nutcracker _. Surely even philistines like John could identify music from _The Nutcracker. _And it was Christmas time. Maybe Sherlock was just trying to get into the holiday mood; he never would have before, but Sherlock had changed a bit, started sharing more. Maybe he was trying out the Christmas cheer thing.____

____John looked up when the music stopped to find Sherlock’s eyes fixed on his face. Ah, yes, there was that laser focus._ _ _ _

____“You recognize this,” Sherlock said._ _ _ _

____“Well, it _is The Nutcracker_ ,” John ventured._ _ _ _

____“Three years ago, you didn’t recognize _Swan Lake_ ,” Sherlock said._ _ _ _

____“And three years ago, you hated Tchaikovsky,” John said. “I never did understand why you were playing it, if you hated it so much. Or why you’re playing it now.”_ _ _ _

____“Sentiment,” Sherlock said, but with none of the bite it had back then. “And because you enjoy it. Besides, it’s Christmas.”_ _ _ _


	8. Day 8: Baking

Sherlock sniffed appreciatively as the sugar and spices melted together on the hob. Cinnamon, allspice, cloves and a double helping of ginger in a large saucepan with sugar and molasses, just starting to bubble. It made the flat smell like Christmas.  
He looked over his _mise en place_ on the table: a large bowl with 875 grams of flour, 227 grams of butter cut into small pieces, two eggs and a small bowl with 65 grams of bicarbonate of soda.  
He removed the pan from the hob and smiled. This was always his favorite part. He poured the bicarb into the sugar mixture and stirred, watching it foam up and nearly fill the pan. That was the reaction his mother had showed him when he was 5 years old to convince him that baking really was applied chemistry.  
John had reacted so well to the cocoa that Sherlock decided to spend his next surgery day baking gingerbread biscuits. They evoked the same kind of nostalgia for Sherlock that the cocoa did, bringing him back to a time when he felt safe and loved and not at all like a freak. He’d spent years running away from those memories, sure he’d never feel that way again, and then there was John.  
He puzzled over just when John had started to feel like home as he stirred in first the butter and the eggs, making the foam deflate into a thick, viscous fluid. He first stirred and then kneaded in .  
the flour, coating his long fingers with the warm, fragrant dough.  
He knew the flat felt different when he returned from his time away, when John no longer lived there, and that when John came back, hurt and angry as he was, it felt right again. Again. It had felt that way before he left, Sherlock realized, yet he still ran away. To protect John, he told himself, and that was part, perhaps most, of it. But if he was honest, he knew he had not tried to include John from the start of the game with Moriarty. If he had, John at the very least might have understood better.  
In any case, it hadn’t been a complete success. He returned to a flat that no longer felt like home and a John who was angry because he thought Sherlock didn’t trust him, and no longer trusted Sherlock in return.  
Sherlock divided the dough into four balls and set one the worktop. As he rolled it flat, always moving from the center toward the edge (how did his muscles remember how to do this?), he considered. John was alive. Here Sherlock was, in 221B, making biscuits of all things, and waiting for John to return from work. So it hadn’t been a complete failure either.  
He looked at the selection of biscuit cutters he had purloined from Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen cupboard and rejected nearly all of them. Santa hats? Stockings? Far too twee.  
But there was a person-shaped one, and Sherlock remembered gingerbread men fondly from his youth. So what if Moriarty had sent him a burnt gingerbread man? That was nothing like these.  
Sherlock used the brief time the biscuits were baking to mix up icing. Mrs. Hudson assured him that red and white, green and gold, would be the colors to use for Christmas, although she may have been expecting cookies shaped like candy canes and Christmas trees.  
Sherlock was just pulling the last cookie sheet from the oven when he heard the street door close and John’s step on the stair.  
“Sherlock! It smells wonderful in here,” John said as he stepped to the kitchen door. “You made biscuits? Another receipt from home?”  
It took John a moment to place the look on Sherlock’s face. He looked, well, a bit abashed, as if he was embarrassed at being caught out. John knew better than to ask about that, so he went on talking about the biscuits.  
“Those look really good,” he said, before his eyes lighted on the sink full of sticky prep dishes.. “Though I see you’ve left all the washing up for me, you prat.”  
“Well, I did go to the trouble of making them,” Sherlock said. “It only seems fair.”  
John snorted at that. “And I only worked all day.”  
Sherlock stacked the first biscuits that came out of the oven to the side before the last batch took their places on the cooling rack.  
Then he took one of the cooled biscuits and started painting on features with a small brush. Yellow. A smiley face like the one on the wall, John saw.  
“Budge over,” John said. “I’ll help decorate.”  
But they grabbed for the same gingerbread man and its head broke off. John laughed and reached for the red icing.  
“This one can be beheaded,” John said using the icing to make his neck into a bloody stump.  
Soon nearly all the biscuits showed evidence of serious injuries, from knife wounds to broken bones. The green-faced ones were nauseated from poison, the yellow-faced ones were jaundiced.  
They took turns making up injuries and having the other deduce what the baked victims had suffered.  
They finally came to the last cookie. Sherlock used white icing to to give it a smiling face and buttons, a waistband and lines at the ankles to denote trousers. Then he used the red to paint a starburst on the left shoulder, right next to the heart he put in the chest.  
John had gone quiet and still. After a moment or two, he broke the silence in a strained voice.  
“What’s that meant to be, then?”  
“It’s you,” Sherlock said. “This one I’m going to keep.”  
“No, Sherlock,” John said. “I’m not your plaything. I’m not something you made. And I know you have no social boundaries, but making fun of my scar us more than a bit not good.”  
“You don’t understand, John,” Sherlock said.  
“I see but I don’t observe? Again?”  
“No, well, yes, but that’s not the point,” Sherlock said. “Moriarty said he’d burn the heart out of me. He even sent me a burnt gingerbread man. But there’s my heart, right there.” His eyes moved from the biscuit to John. “It’s right next to your scar, the mark of the wound that brought you to me, the wound that a lesser man would never have survived. You’re the strongest, bravest man I know, John, and I think we both know you’re my heart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adapted the recipe I use for gingerbread. It's wonderful. Find it [here](http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/a4393/gh-gingerbread-cutouts-1522/).


	9. Chapter 9

This was shaping up to be the best holiday season John could remember, at least since he was still young enough to believe in Father Christmas.  
He was home -- really home, with Sherlock in Baker Street with Mrs. Hudson downstairs -- and the mess he’d made of his life in the months after Sherlock returned was slowly receding from his day-to-day consciousness.  
He no longer worried that Sherlock let him stay here on sufferance, as a kind of penance for leaving John vulnerable to Mary in the first place. The camaraderie they’d shared when they lived together before was developing again, but this time it felt different. Sherlock was different. Sure, he still did mad experiments and played the violin at all hours, but he seemed to do it with one eye on John now, looking for signs he was about to cross the line before he really did.  
John supposed that no one could actually die and come back and not be changed in some ways. His near-death in Afghanistan had certainly changed him, although he feared not for the better.  
But Sherlock had changed before Mary shot him, with the way he planned John’s wedding and then the heartfelt speech he gave. Sherlock had felt abandoned after the wedding, that much was clear, and John had felt stuck, without Sherlock to pull him from the muddy rut in which he found himself. That was all over now.  
John chuckled a bit to himself, remembering being 6 years old and spending an evening using his very best printing to write a letter to Father Christmas, telling him everything he wanted. Had Sherlock ever done that? He didn’t for a moment think Sherlock ever believed in Father Christmas, but he might have written a letter if he thought it would get him what he wanted.  
The boy John had been then had every expectation of growing up and getting married and being a dad, he thought. But if he could have told that boy that he’d grow up to be a soldier, and a doctor, and that he’d spend his days and a fair few nights chasing criminals round London with a bloke who wore his coat like Batman’s cape, well, that boy would have thought it sounded a lot better than pushing a pram round the park.  
If he were to write a letter to Father Christmas this year, what would he ask for? Peace on earth and a solution to world hunger? No, that's not what Father Christmas was for. For Sherlock to want John the way John wanted him? No, that was probably against a Christmas magic rule as well. Father Christmas couldn’t make people develop feelings that weren’t there.  
John did want Sherlock to continue letting him into his life in ways he never had until recently. He wanted the shy grins and the affectionate touches and the laughing over nothing. He wanted sweet music on the violin and treats from the kitchen, even if he had to do the washing up. He wanted to be a witness not just to Sherlock’s brilliance, but also to his dedication to justice and the kindness he tried so hard to hide. He wanted to cause the flash of surprise and the look of unabashed pride that crossed Sherlock's face when John gave him a well-deserved compliment.  
That gave John an idea. He couldn't do justice to what Sherlock had said about him at his wedding, but he could let him know how grateful John was for the life they shared.  
“Dear Father Christmas,” he wrote, “I don't have much on my Christmas list this year because so many of my wishes have come true. You might not be the right person to thank, but the difference in my life from last Christmas to this is more than I could have hoped for, even if getting here wasn't always easy. My flatmate and partner is the best friend I could ever hope to have. He’s brilliant, of course, but also funny and generous and, in his own way, kind. He takes the trouble to understand me better than anyone ever has. He makes me see myself differently, as better than I am, and he makes me a better man. I wish you could help him see how brave and wise and strong he is.  
“Also, if you think of it, maybe you could bring a new jumper or two to replace the ones he’s ruined?  
“Happy Christmas!  
“Sincerely,  
“John Watson”

John read over his letter, then tore the sheet from the notebook, crumpled it and put it in the bin under the desk, taking care to shove it under yesterday's Daily Mail. That should do it.


	10. Day 10: Scrooge

Sherlock was in high spirits when he reached the door to 221 Baker Street.

He had been out looking for gifts for John, looking forward to seeing his friend (more than friend?) open them on Christmas.

Sherlock had never really seen the point of giving Christmas gifts before this year, but now he wanted more than anything to make John’s face light up.

Then he caught sight of the knocker and his mood dropped a few notches. He climbed the stairs slowly, feeling his cheerfulness slip further when he opened the sitting room door to Mycroft ensconced in John’s chair.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said, inclining his chin a degree or two. He set down the bag containing three new jumpers. One was in blue, to set off John’s eyes, knit in soft cashmere. Another in hunter green with a cable knit, similar to the beige jumper John had worn that first night at Angelo’s, but in a better color for John and with a less bulky silhouette to better show off John’s compact body. The third was the loudest, ugliest Christmas jumper Sherlock could find without actually being a gag gift. He planned to box them with the Christmas jumper on top, with the others hidden beneath.

“Hello, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “Joining the throngs in contributing to the retail economy? That is the true meaning of Christmas, after all.”

“Buying gifts? I always thought it had something to do with the founder of Christianity and eternal salvation and so forth,” Sherlock said. “Peace on earth and good will towards men?”

“Ah, yes, good will towards men. You’re exhibiting that to an extraordinary extent,” Mycroft said. “You were seen ice skating last week. You bought cocoa powder and molasses. You went … Christmas shopping.”

Mycroft’s voice dripped with disdain.

“You used to hate Christmas nearly as much as I did,” Mycroft continued. “Now you’re going shopping? At a clothing store, expensive but not bespoke, so not for you? Who could you have been shopping for?”

“Am I supposed to be embarrassed that I bought a gift for John?” Sherlock asked. “He’s my best friend, and he says I am his best friend. We’re flatmates and we work together. I certainly don’t think it’s a presumption to buy him a gift.”

“Perhaps not,” Mycroft said. “Gifts can be useful to develop a sense of intimacy or even obligation that can be exploited later.”

“Of course,” Sherlock said. “Gifts can also be a way to expiate a sense of obligation. Or they can be an avenue to expressing feelings of affection, or a way to meet a need that the recipient has, or simply a device to bring joy to another.”

“And what am I to think of the gifts you purchased John?” Mycroft asked.

“You may think what you please,” Sherlock said. “I daresay that gifts can have more than one motivation. I will say that I have no intention of exploiting John’s good will.”

Mycroft arched a delicate eyebrow. “Sherlock, you do nothing but exploit John’s good will.”

“Not by buying him gifts,” Sherlock said. “Mycroft, have you never given someone a gift simply because it would give you pleasure to please someone else? Are you that much of a Scrooge, only looking at what’s in it for you?”

Mycroft didn’t answer for a moment.

“Scrooge is a character in a story, a miser who …” Sherlock began speaking again. “He sees ghosts. John read the story, and made me watch a film version.”

“Yes, Sherlock, I’m aware of Ebenezer Scrooge,” Mycroft said. “To answer your question, it has been a very long time since I gave a gift with such pure intentions. My concern is that your intentions are less than pure towards your good doctor, and any manipulation of him at this point could be fatal to your friendship. Be sure you know what you’re doing.”

Sherlock was pulled up short.

“I told you before,” he said. “I won’t do that. I’ve hurt John too much. I won’t do it again. John’s too important.”

Mycroft stood and tapped his umbrella on the floor as if to announce his imminent departure.

“Very well, brother mine. In case I don’t see you, I’ll wish you a happy Christmas now.”


	11. Day 11: Mulled Wine

John stirred the sugar and spices on the hob, watching as the sugar slowly dissolved and inhaling the scent of cinnamon and cloves.  
He had sliced oranges on the worktop, ready to add to the mixture after it boiled, and a bottle of sweet red wine.  
He was following the receipt he found online for mulled wine carefully, wanting to make sure the drinks were sweet and spicy without being syrupy.  
After all, Sherlock had surprised him over the past week with cocoa and gingerbread. For the whole time they’d known each other, John had thought of himself as the cook, the one who could make food appetizing enough to tempt his fussy flatmate to eat. Sherlock had comforted him with the cocoa, but turning out three dozen perfectly browned gingerbread biscuits was throwing down a gauntlet. John had to up his holiday kitchen game.  
Thus the internet search for a mulled wine reciept that would be simple to prepare, satisfy Sherlock’s sweet tooth and and not look like something the receptionist at the clinic found on Pinterest and printed to hang on the actual bulletin board.  
This time it was Sherlock coming up the stairs and walking into the kitchen inhaling deeply.  
“That smells wonderful,” Sherlock said. “Gets rid of the oily smell Mycroft left behind. Mulled wine?”  
“Got it in one,” John said. “Of course, with spices on the hob, oranges and a bottle of wine, it really shouldn’t have stretched your deductive powers.”  
John removed the sugar and spices from the heat and added the oranges to the the liquid.  
“Those need to soak for a few minutes before I add the wine,” John said. “Shouldn’t be long. I’ve never made it before – you’ll have to tell me what you think.”  
“Wine, spices, sugar. It’s difficult to go too far wrong,” Sherlock said. “But it’s a good thing to have on a cold evening.”  
“Have you eaten?” John asked.  
“I had some … something … with coffee at Barts,” Sherlock said.  
“I’ll get us some crackers and cheese,” John said, turning to the fridge for the cheese and pulling a box of crackers from a cupboard. “You ate at Barts? So how was Molly?”  
“She was remarkably resistant to giving me the tissue samples I wanted,” Sherlock said with a small frown. “I had to accompany her to the cafeteria and actually purchase food before she would even discuss it.”  
“But she did give you the samples?” John asked.  
“Yes, eventually,” Sherlock sounded petulant. “I never had to to work so hard to persuade her to help me before.”  
“You still got your samples,” John said. “I wouldn’t worry.”  
John added the wine to the mixture and set it over the heat to warm.  
“If you really need something from Molly, you might try working through Greg,” he said.  
“Greg?”  
“Don’t pretend you don’t know Lestrade’s first name,” John said, but he was smiling. “She’s been looking at him the way she used to look at you.”  
Sherlock looked surprised for a moment, and then his face fell a bit.  
“Come on, Sherlock, you can’t tell me that you didn’t know Molly fancied you,” John said. “Remember that first Christmas here, when you deduced her gift? But it didn’t really matter because everyone knew Molly fancied you. Probably the swans in the park knew. And you used it to get her to aid and abet your experiments more times than I can count.”  
“And you think that was a bit not good,” Sherlock said, and wandered into the sitting room.  
John followed with a tray carrying the mugs of wine and cheese and crackers. and set it on the table in front of the sofa.  
Sherlock took his mug and sipped at it thoughtfully. “If you didn’t like the way I treated Molly, why didn’t you stop me?”  
“What, from having her bring you coffee and let you look at interesting corpses?” John said. “I guess because she knew exactly what was going on, and she could have stopped you any time she liked. And none of what you did was meant to deceive her, to make her think that you fancied her. So it was her lookout. If she wanted to play that game with you, she wouldn’t have thanked me for putting my nose where it didn’t belong.”  
Sherlock took a long pull at his mug, and John thought about reminding him that the drink, while sweet and warm and tasting of Christmas, did contain a fair amount of alcohol. But Sherlock knew that; he’d watched John make it.  
John sipped more slowly and watched Sherlock consider Molly.  
“If I treated her so badly, then why would she keep helping me?” he asked. “As you pointed out, she did give me the samples.”  
“Because even if she doesn’t want to be romantically involved with you anymore, she does like you,” John said. “You have friends who care about you, who know that you’re mad and sometimes rude but also brilliant and funny and kind in your way. I’m not your only friend, and I never have been. And you – you told me ‘Alone protects me’ and then you jumped off a roof to protect your friends. Did you not see the irony?”  
“I thought you were my only friend,” Sherlock said. “But you’re right. How are you right? How did you know that?”  
John made a scoffing sound but didn’t answer, and they sat in silence for a while.  
Sherlock got up to refill his mug and that sat in his chair in front of John. His cheeks were flushed pink and his eyes were bright and John wanted to reach out and touch his face, to feel the warmth.  
“You might not be my only friend,” Sherlock told him. “But you are different from everyone else. You put up with me when I’m rude, sometimes you seem to enjoy it. You let me talk you into doing things against your better judgment, but you’re not stupid or weak-willed and you tell me when I’ve gone too far, so you’re not afraid of offending me. Why are you like that?”  
Because I love you, John wanted to say. Because I want to take care of you and I want everyone to see how brilliant and beautiful you are.  
“You’re my best friend,” John said. “I suppose we’re more alike than people realize, except that according to you, I’m an idiot.”  
“Practically everyone is,” Sherlock said, looking at John almost fondly. “And you’re nowhere near as much an idiot as everyone else.”

__

John’s mulled wine recipe.


	12. Day 12: Ugly Christmas Jumpers

Sherlock was still in his room when he heard John leave for work early on Saturday morning.  
It was John’s half-day at the surgery, his favorite shift of the week. Fewer doctors, fewer patients, and the ones who came in were usually actually sick.   
But even if the shift was half as long, John took just as much time preparing for it: first the shower in their shared bathroom, which woke Sherlock about three hours after he had gone to sleep. Sherlock tracked him through his morning routine by sound: the noises he associated with John making tea, the snick of the toaster popping, the clink of a knife against the lip of the jam jar.  
The water ran in the sink, long enough for John to rinse his dishes and wash his hands, then he heard John’s footsteps patter down the stairs -- he was trying to be quiet, Sherlock could tell, out of consideration to Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock himself -- and the street door opened and closed.  
Sherlock was alone in the flat until at least 12:30, maybe later if John stopped at the shops on the way back.  
He rolled out of bed, stretched and tried to enjoy having the flat to himself. He could play the violin as loudly as he wanted, even something atonal by Philip Glass. He could lounge around wrapped in a sheet without John telling him to “put some bloody clothes on, please. This is neither ancient Rome nor a toga party.” He could break into John’s computer and see what kind of porn he’d been watching (Did he watch porn anymore, since Mary? Sherlock hadn’t seen any clear indications and he’d been trying to respect John’s privacy).  
As Sherlock wandered into the sitting room, he saw the jumper John had worn yesterday on the sofa. It was definitely bright and loud enough to qualify as a Christmas jumper, although it had no discernable holiday motif. Sherlock did not object on principle to clothes with bright colors -- he had several jewel-tone shirts that won appreciative glances from men and women alike.  
But in this jumper, the colors actually clashed, the yarn used to knit it looked shiny and artificial, and worst of all, it had no shape whatsoever, and made John look short and lumpy rather than compact and powerful.  
The jumper would have to go.  
After all, hadn’t Sherlock already bought three new jumpers for John that were far superior to this one? John didn’t know that yet, but his failures of deduction were hardly Sherlock’s fault. With that thought, Sherlock deleted the small pang of conscience that was trying to tell him that John would not like this, not one little bit.  
It was shortly after 1 p.m. that Sherlock heard John open the street door and start trudging up the stairs. The sound brought messages unbidden to Sherlock’s brain -- carrier bags, heavy, John was tired, must be something going around -- while Sherlock tried to focus on his experiment.  
Then John’s voice, irritated: “What on earth is that smell? Don’t tell me you’re going to burn down the flat.”  
Sherlock tried to shut it out, making notes in his lab book about the qualities if the smoke -- acrid, black, oily -- and the ash that fell on the plate.  
“Good Christ, Sherlock, that had better not be my jumper!”  
John’s shout broke through any defenses Sherlock had left and he looked up to see John, nearly glowing with outrage. Really, that level of incandescence was out of all proportion to having Sherlock use his jumper to practise identifying fiber content by burning it.  
Sherlock tried deflecting with humour.  
“Well, it’s not precisely your jumper, at least not anymore,” Sherlock said. “Not really a jumper anymore.”  
John sniffed and his mouth twisted, but not in amusement. Sherlock knew that face. It did not bode well. Why was John overreacting so much?  
“Not a jumper anymore.” John’s voice was tight, his effort to control himself evident in the lines of his face and the line of his shoulders. “Not a bloody jumper. Just something for you to experiment on.”  
“I needed something to use to see how accurate burn tests were in identifying fibers,” Sherlock said reasonably. Perhaps John was afraid Sherlock had violated his precious privacy. “It was in the sitting room. I didn’t go through your things.”  
“It was in the sitting room? So that makes it yours?” John said. “Is everything in the flat yours to experiment on, hmm? That was my jumper Sherlock. My mum gave it to me. You might not like it, but she gave it to me for Christmas the year before I shipped out. It was the last Christmas we had together, and it was the best she could afford, and it was mine.”  
John turned and clattered back down the stairs, making no effort to be quiet, and slammed the door on his way out.  
Sherlock was still sitting at the table, looking at the kitchen door.

 

Sherlock found John sitting on a bench in Regent’s Park an hour later. His shoulders were slumped and his head bowed. The anger that had pulled him taut and straight was gone, replaced with what? Sorrow? Over what? John’s mum had died years ago, and the jumper was worn out and not fit for public consumption anymore.  
Then again, John hadn’t worn it out of the flat, had he? He’d worn it on a day he stayed in, on a day he made Sherlock mulled wine to welcome him home, and he left it in the sitting room when he went upstairs, left it out like it was his home, and then Sherlock took it and ruined it. Oh.  
For once, Sherlock was not pleased by his epiphany. John made the flat feel like home to Sherlock, but when John behaved as if the flat was his home, Sherlock took his jumper -- his jumper that reminded him of his mum -- and ruined it.  
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, approaching John. “I didn’t know the jumper was so important to you.”  
“I know,” John said. “But you shouldn’t have taken it anyway. And I know that if you took the time to think about it -- to deduce it -- you would have been able to figure out that it was important. You didn’t even take the what, half a minute, to see that. You were just offended by my lack of taste in clothing and decided to do something about it. It’s as if you see how I dress as a reflection on you. But really, you had no right.”  
“I know. I’m sorry,” Sherlock said again. “I didn’t think.”  
Sherlock didn’t say: I was thinking about being alone in the flat and I wanted to use your things so it would be like I was closer to you and I could think about giving you lovely jumpers that would be warm and comfortable and make it easier for everyone to see how remarkable you are. But I didn’t think about why you liked that jumper and I ruined it.  
“I know you didn’t mean it,” John said. “And I know that jumper was getting a bit tatty and I couldn’t wear it forever and it was just a jumper. But seeing in ashes … my mum died when I was deployed, and when I came home, there wasn’t that much left from her. Harry had to deal with the funeral and boxing everything up and selling the house on her own, and she just donated most of her things, and that’s fine, she had to do what she thought best and it’s not like there were lots of heirlooms to be divvied up. Just the usual clabber that people build up, awful cheap furniture and a telly and dishes and such. But when I came back, it was all gone. There was no home for me to come back to … which was fine. I never wanted to go back anyway. But there were just a couple of boxes of clothes I’d left, and some photographs Harry saved for me.”  
“You have a home now,” Sherlock said quietly.  
“I’m grateful for you letting me stay, especially when I first came back and couldn’t pay rent until I sorted the other flat,” John said. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you.”  
“No,” Sherlock said quickly. “No, I mean you don’t have to thank me. You shouldn’t thank me, in fact, because it’s your home, too. It has been since we first moved it, and you have as much right to live there as I do, and it’s not really home if you’re not there.”  
John was staring at him. It wasn’t the admiring gaze when he solved an especially pretty problem, or the look of anger that made him want to shrink into himself. It was surprised, then assessing, then understanding.  
“I know,” John said. “That’s why I had to leave when you weren’t there. It didn’t feel right without you -- I didn’t feel right staying there. Now it does. It doesn’t really matter about the jumper.”  
“What happened to the photos?” Sherlock asked.   
“What photos?” John asked, thrown a bit by the change in subject.  
“The ones Harry saved for you.” Sherlock left unspoken the fact that if they were in the flat -- under John’s bed or on a shelf in the back of the wardrobe -- Sherlock would have found them by now.  
“Harry still has them,” John said. “When I came back, before they discharged me from the rehab hospital, she came to see me, and I took my clothes because I had nothing else to wear, and not much money to buy new, and I took the phone she gave me because I would need one. I told her to keep the pictures, because that wasn’t my life anymore.”  
Sherlock sat in silence a moment longer and then stood, extending his hand to pull John up.  
“Come home, John,” he said.


	13. Day 13; Warming Up in Front of the Fire

John settled back onto his heels, watching as the flames consumed the kindling and licked at the logs he had laid in the grate.

Satisfied that they were going to catch, John pushed himself up back, sitting in his chair and extending his feet towards the fire.

He’d come back to the flat with Sherlock an hour ago, and taken time to shower and change while Sherlock cleaned up the remains of his experiment. Sherlock had been quiet, which in itself wasn’t unusual, but there was a thoughtful quality to it.

John didn’t really know what to say. Sherlock had apologized -- twice -- and told John that home didn’t feel like home without him. This was the man who called himself a high-functioning sociopath?

John had forgiven him for destroying his jumper almost as soon as he left the flat, but he hadn’t returned right away because he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t want to leave Sherlock, ever. He knew that, and he knew that 221B was his home.

But he was tired of being seen as an appendage to Sherlock, someone whose only value came from his famous friend. To have Sherlock treat his things as though he had every right to them … And it had been going on ever since they had met. At least he had given Sherlock permission to use his phone that first day.

Sherlock, who had showered after John, dropped into his chair and John looked at him.

Sherlock had shared some memories over the past few days; maybe it was John’s turn.

“When I was a kid,” John started out of nowhere, “I would be watching telly -- maybe some footie or something -- and my dad would come into the room and change the channel. He’d put on whatever he wanted, wouldn’t ask first, wouldn’t explain, just change the channel like I wasn’t even there.”

John took a sip of his tea and looked at Sherlock, to see Sherlock looking back, waiting for him to continue.

“It was almost always boxing,” John said. “God, I hate boxing. If I said anything -- if I asked to watch the end of the game, or just asked why he was changing it away from what I was watching, he’d say, ‘My house, my telly. When you buy the telly, then you can watch what you want.’”

“That was quite rude,” Sherlock said.

“Yes, yes it was,” John said. “But it was right, as far as it went. I really couldn’t do anything about it, except wait for the day I stood on my own feet and paid my own way and could do what I wanted, up to and including watching the footie if I wanted to.”

“I almost never watch telly,” Sherlock said. “You can always watch what you like.”

“Not the point, Sherlock,” John said. “Or maybe it is. It’s that you can tell me what I can and can’t watch -- even if you never change the channel or say no when I want to watch Doctor Who. It’s your telly, after all, and I moved in here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My wife shot you, Sherlock, she tried to kill you and all but succeeded. I brought her into your life -- I bear some responsibility for that -- but once I was able to extricate myself from her, what do I do but show up on your doorstep, hat in hand?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sherlock said. “And you bear no responsibility for what Mary did. No more than I do, at least. I left, and she targeted you to find out if I was really dead. I should apologize for bringing her into your life.”

“Maybe it’s not what you thought you meant,” John said. “But it’s the way things are, and I don’t know how to get past it.”

Sherlock had gone pale at the suggestion that John couldn’t solve this.

“You can’t move out, John,” he said. “This is your home. You didn’t come looking for a handout or a place to stay. You came home.”

“I came home to you,” John said. “And I’m glad I did, so glad. I’m not moving out. But when I saw you burning up my jumper, the jumper my mum gave me, it felt like you just didn’t care what I thought, like you thought you could just take my things because they were here, and this place is yours.”

Sherlock still looked stricken, but also like he was thinking furiously as the fire crackled. Then he said, “This place isn’t mine. It’s ours. I couldn’t have moved in here without you --”

“Oh, come on, Sherlock, don’t cry poor,” John said. “I’ve met your family.”

“But Mycroft controlled my money when we first met, and he wouldn’t have given me enough to live here by myself,” Sherlock said. “He seemed to think I needed someone to look after me.”

“Could have fooled me when he kidnapped me,” John said.

“John, I’ve said it before, but it’s still true: You’ve saved my life so many times in so many ways,” Sherlock said. “What I did to your jumper -- and I will replace it, as long you don’t seriously want me to buy something made from synthetic fibers -- what I did was stupid and thoughtless, and you shouldn’t be surprised anymore when I go too far. I wasn’t keeping you in your place, I was behaving like a petulant, spoiled child doing something he knew he shouldn’t. For what it’s worth, I think your father was acting like a spoiled child as well.”

John sat up in his chair, surprised. “You’re nothing like him, Sherlock. I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. But thank you.”

“Thank you? For what?” Sherlock asked.

John leaned back again and reached out his sock-clad foot to nudge Sherlock’s knee. “For the new jumper you’re going to buy me,” he smirked.


	14. Day 14: Trimming the Tree

When Sherlock returned home, it was to find the sofa shoved over to make room in the corner by the window.  
In the corner stood a tree. It wasn’t very large -- John would be able to reach the top -- but it’s deep green needles and heady aroma seemed to dominate the room. John was standing in front of it, still wearing his jacket and gloves, assessing.  
“Does that look straight to you?” John asked, by way of greeting.  
“Why is there a tree in our sitting room?” Sherlock responded, ignoring the tree’s slight list to the left.  
“Oh, come on, Sherlock. You don’t expect me to believe you don’t know about Christmas trees?”  
“You believed I didn’t know about the solar system,” Sherlock pointed out.  
“Because you didn’t,” John chimed in.  
“Of course I know about Christmas trees. The question is, why is there one in our flat? We’ve never done a tree before.”  
“I know,” John said. “It’s just, I know I was in a bit of a mood yesterday, and I wanted to do something nice. I thought I’d get us a tree, if that’s all right.”  
Sherlock cursed himself silently. He wanted John to understand the flat was his home, and here he was asking permission again. It wasn’t even as if Sherlock objected to the tree on principle. It did smell nice, and he had already thought of a dozen experiments he could run once John had his fill of it.  
“Bit undersized, isn’t it?” was all Sherlock said. “What, were you using yourself as a measuring stick?”  
John smiled -- no, wait for it, chuckled -- and Sherlock rejoiced inside. Coddling would never work on John.  
“I couldn’t get one your size, you bloody tall git,” John said. “I wouldn’t have been able to carry it home.”  
“What are you going to put on it?” Sherlock asked. “Did you buy baubles as well?”  
“Mrs. Hudson had some,” John said. “She said she’s not doing a tree this year because she’s going to her sister’s, so we could use hers. Besides, when I was kid, we didn’t have many ornaments that were just red balls or whatnot, so I didn’t really think of it.”  
“What did you put on your Christmas tree, then?” Sherlock asked.  
“We got ornaments as gifts, you know, things that showed what we liked, and we made a bunch more. I think my mum still had a little foil wreath I made in nursery school on the last tree we had before I left.” John smiled again, this time an inward grin. “Our trees were never what you would call classy or stylish, but they looked like us.”  
Sherlock made a mental note to ask Harry what happened to the family Christmas ornaments next time he spoke to her. He’d visited her that morning, asking for John’s box of photos. Her response wasn’t entirely satisfactory; she had lost track of them when she moved after she and Clara split. But she said she’d look.  
John went downstairs to fetch the decorations from Mrs. Hudson and came back up balancing a large box in his right hand and his mobile in his left. “All right, Sarah, yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” John said. “No worries. I can use the money.”  
He slipped the phone back in his pocket and deposited the box on coffee table.  
“I’ll have to do this later,” John said. “It seems Dr. Agarwahl has come down with the gastro virus that’s going around, and Sarah’s got a waiting room full of patients, an appointment list a mile long and not enough people to see them. It shouldn’t be too late in the evening when I’m done, though. Takeaway?”  
“Hmm,” Sherlock agreed absently, seating himself at the desk with his laptop. He didn’t have much confidence in Harry’s help. Perhaps Clara would know where the photos were, and she should be simple enough to find.

Sherlock had just sent an email off to Clara Crawford when he heard Mrs. Hudson on the stairs.  
“Woo-hoo, Sherlock!” she said. “I found more fairy lights if you want to put them on the tree.”  
She put them down next to the box and moved into the kitchen to put down the plate of scones she also brought and to turn the kettle on.  
“Busy, Mrs. Hudson. No time for a cuppa and gossip,” he said.  
“Nonsense, Sherlock. Have a cuppa with me,” Mrs. Hudson said. “I think it’s nice that you boys are going to have a real Christmas, with a tree and everything.”  
“Yes, well, Mrs. Hudson, if I’m to get the tree decorated before John gets back, I’d best get started, so thanks for making the tea, but I can’t sit and talk,” Sherlock said.  
“I’ll help,” his persistent landlady said. “I can’t bend like I used to -- I have a hip, you know -- but I’ll test these lights before you string them.”  
The two worked in companionable silence, Mrs. Hudson untangling lights and replacing dead bulbs, Sherlock taking the strings one by one and arranging them to best effect. The box held a variety of ornaments, everything from Father Christmas figures to pictures of cats in stockings, and a good many were shiny enough to wink and glitter when the lights were on.  
For the top, thank heavens, there was a star instead of an angel.  
Still, Sherlock thought the tree was missing something. John said the trees he had done as a child had looked like them. He looked around the flat to see what he could find. No candy canes, that was obvious. But their first case, the serial suicides -- that could be a pill bottle. John shot Jefferson Hope, but he couldn’t go handing a handgun on the tree. Wait. There were some bullet casings somewhere. The Chinese smuggling case -- he could tie a string around the lucky cat.  
An old mobile -- so much of their work involved phones one way or another. Mrs. Hudson had dog ornament; that would do for the hound case. A tube timetable folded and cut into a snowflake for the Fifth of November plot. Once he started, there were lots of things he could hang on the tree. But nothing from Moriarty, and nothing from Mary.  
He had just finished -- a crutch he fashioned out of a paperclip for the aluminium crutch case -- when he heard John come in.  
“You did it all,” John said, when he reached the top of the stairs and looked into the sitting room. “But what’s this? Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t have put handcuffs in the box. Or -- is that a shell casing? A pipette?”  
“You said your old trees looked like you,” Sherlock said. “I wanted this one to look like us.”  
“Wow, Sherlock, you did a lot of work,” John said, standing back and trying to pick out Sherlock’s contributions. The lucky cat, the crutch.  
Then John took another step back.  
“You know, Sherlock,” he said. “It leans a little to the left.”  
“Well, you always have been a little off,” Sherlock said.


	15. Day 15: Christmas Party

John passed over the beer bottles in favor of the red punch that took pride of place on the table that served as a bar.  
He poured himself a cup, and poured a second cup for Sherlock, looking across the room at the detective. Sherlock was leaning against the wall in a corner, talking to Lestrade and looking around the room. Observing, he would say.  
John took the opportunity to observe Sherlock. He was still tall and lithe and ethereal-looking, but he looked older, with lines starting to show on his face. He was too gorgeous for John’s own good, if John was honest with himself. But he was different from when he and John first met, some changes wrought by his time away, some by the ordeal with Mary, some just from living in proximity to someone he cared about. He wasn’t open, not with most people, not by a far stretch, but the facade he put up was more genuine, and he didn’t take such pains to hide his emotions. John didn’t think he’d made a victim cry in months now.  
Sherlock must have felt eyes on him, because he looked up and met John’s gaze. John held up the two cups and started making his way back to Sherlock.  
When he got there, Sally Donovan had joined Lestrade, and was trying to persuade her boss onto the dance floor, but Lestrade was putting her off.  
“I’m your boss, Sally,” he said. “People will talk.”  
“People do little else,” John quipped, catching Sherlock’s eye again.  
“It’s just a dance,” Sally said. “It doesn’t mean anything. I just feel like dancing.”  
“And blokes outnumber girls here three to one, so if you want a bloke to dance with, take your pick,” Lestrade said.  
“But I outrank almost all of them,” Sally said. “It feels weird.”  
“Then you know what I mean,” Lestrade countered.  
“John here isn’t part of the Met, so there’s no question of rank,” Sherlock contributed. “And he’s far too much of a gentleman to refuse. Ask him.”  
“Sherlock!” John said, aghast. Was Sherlock trying to be his wingman? With Sally Donovan, of all people? “Maybe she doesn’t want to dance with a washed-up old doctor with a limp.”  
“Come now, John, you’re limp is much improved these last couple of weeks,” Sherlock said. “And you’re a doctor -- no washed up about it. Given the looks I’ve seen you getting, you’re quite the catch.”  
John swallowed. Is that what Sherlock thought? That he was out looking for a woman? But he couldn’t seriously be trying to set him up with Sally.  
“Yeah, Dr. Watson, come on,” Sally said, giving him an exaggerated up-and-down look. “You’ll do.”  
She took his elbow and he followed her onto the dance floor. Once they were in the middle, and out of Sherlock’s direct line of sight, Sally rested her arms on John’s shoulders and began moving gently to the beat. John’s hands went to her waist and he mirrored her motion, a good six inches between their bodies. This he could do.  
Once they were dancing, or making a reasonable facsimile of dancing, Sally spoke.  
“I wanted to get you away from Sherlock for a moment to apologize to you,” she said. “I know I had a part in what happened to Sherlock, and I know what that did to you. I already talked to Sherlock when he came back. But I am sorry. I thought I was only doing my job, but I should have looked more closely at the evidence.”  
“Uh, thank you, I guess,” John said. “I was angry at you at first, but then I met Mary, and then Sherlock was back, and I was angry at him, and then everything spun out of control. I don’t think you’re responsible for any of that. Not as much as I am, anyway.”  
“So, how’s it going, living with him again?” Sally asked.  
Maybe it was the punch he had drained before Sally dragged him onto the dance floor, but he answered more honestly than he intended.  
“It’s good,” he said. “But not like before. I feel like I ruined everything. Like Sherlock expects me to leave all the time.”  
Sally snorted. “That’s rich, coming from him.”  
John glanced back at the corner where Sherlock and Lestrade still stood.  
“I’d stay forever if he let me,” John said.  
Sally looked at him, her expression a mixture of understanding and sympathy.  
“So why are you telling me?” she said. “Have you told him?”


	16. Day 16: Christmas traditions

John slept in the day after the Yard’s Christmas party.  
Sherlock was up before him. He took his tea into the sitting room, where he could see the Christmas tree, because he found he liked to look at it.  
Sherlock picked up John’s laptop and opened it, not with the intention of doing any real research. He just wanted to poke around a bit, take a look and see if he could get a read on what John was thinking about.  
Because John was definitely preoccupied with something. He had made trips out of the flat that broke his pattern, he sometimes looked at Sherlock longer than he ever did before, he grew quiet at odd times.  
He had been quiet the night before, not objecting when Sherlock suggested leaving the Met’s party an hour after arriving. Sherlock intended that as an opening gambit -- when he agreed to go to the party in the first place, he expected to have to stay at least two hours to make John happy.  
Now John was still in his room at 10 a.m., and he hadn’t had enough to drink the night before to be truly hungover.  
John’s laptop turned out to be as inscrutable as John himself. John should stop streaming videos from non-official sites, Sherlock tutted to himself, as he set about removing malware and spyware (not installed by him). That would make the computer run faster, and make John more tolerant of Sherlock’s habit of using at as often as he used his own.  
He found John’s search for how to make mulled wine, and saw John had been looking at other cooking sites. Turkey, some kind of beef roast, potatoes, a vegetable casserole that looked truly vile.  
John was planning to cook Christmas dinner. Sherlock picked up his phone and dialed.  
“Hello, Mummy,” he said, as soon as she answered. “John is planning to cook Christmas dinner.”  
Pause.  
“No, I wasn’t inviting you. John and I agreed to, as he put it 'lay low this year, after the disaster that was last Christmas,' with Mary and Magnussen."  
Pause.  
“Yes, Mary is monstrous. Yes, it is nice that John wants to make us a meal, but it’s a bit frightening because his cooking is usually of the beans-on-toast or that-thing-with-peas variety. Or tea. He makes marvellous tea. No, we don’t act as if we were an old married couple.”  
Pause.  
“Yes, those examples notwithstanding, we still do not act as if we were married.”  
Pause.  
“Because we don’t have. … Never mind, mummy. That’s not why I called.”  
Short pause.  
“I called to see if you could send me a receipt and instructions for the roast beef and roasted potatoes you make every Christmas. That way, if I offer to help cook, I can pull out an ‘old family receipt,’” and I know it will work.”  
Pause.  
“No, Mrs. Hudson can’t cook for us. She’ll be away.”  
Pause.  
“Yes, that does mean we’ll have the building to ourselves. Mummy, what are you implying? … Never mind. Could you also send the recipe for the Christmas trifle you make? It was always my favorite. Thank you, Mummy.”  
Sherlock was just ending the call when he heard John come downstairs and shuffle into the bathroom. The toilet rushed, the water ran, and when John appeared in the sitting room doorway a few minutes later, Sherlock was in his chair, updating the database of pollens found in the soils of different areas of London.  
“My laptop again?” John asked, sounding resigned. “Could you at least give the hard drive a clean? It’s been sluggish.”  
“Of course,” Sherlock said, not mentioning that it was already done. “John, we’re still planning on staying in on Christmas, right?”  
“Well, yeah, I mean not visiting anyone. Might take a walk if the weather’s not too bad,” John said.  
“Yes, well, my mother called, and she asked if we might like to make the trifle she always makes for Christmas,” Sherlock said. “We missed it last year. Would you be offended if she sent the receipt?”  
“Course not, Sherlock,” John said. “Maybe we can make dinner together. Without Mrs. Hudson here, we won’t have anyone to tut at us for doing it wrong.”  
Sherlock smiled. He didn’t even have to make the suggestion.  
“Wonderful idea, John,” Sherlock said.  
“Yeah, well,” John said. “It could become our Christmas tradition.”


	17. Day 17: Christmas Without You

It was a surgery day for John again, and Sherlock found himself at loose ends.

He had packaged and wrapped John’s new jumpers -- he had added a fourth, to make up for the one he burned -- and he considered going shopping to see if he could find something else for John as well. Something that would make clear that he considered John to be more important than simply a flatmate and friend, if John had somehow missed that. He supposed clothes were a personal gift, but then, John might just think Sherlock was trying to improve his taste.

In any case, he had not bought gifts for Mrs. Hudson and Molly, and Mrs. Hudson would be leaving Monday to visit her sister. Maybe John had shopped for them? And maybe his mother was right, he was behaving as though they were an old married couple.

Sitting in the John-less flat was becoming unbearable, so Sherlock decided that, gifts or not, an outing was order.

That’s how it happened that 221B was empty when John trudged up the steps at the end of the day, his leg twinging and his shoulder aching. It had been a day filled with flu and, for the healthy ones, flu jabs. There had been urinary tract infections (two), strep throat (one) and lots of counseling about high cholesterol and hypertension. Nothing life or death, at least not immediately, no fascinating diseases or difficult diagnoses. Boring, as Sherlock would say, but a bloody lot of work.

Then Mrs. Gardiner came in. She wasn't very old -- eight years older than John, according to her chart, and she had few physical complaints. But she had been widowed several months earlier, and was facing her first Christmas alone after more than 25 years of marriage, and it had thrown her for a loop.

Ostensibly, the reason she came to see John was because she was having trouble sleeping.

“I keep remembering what our Christmases were like when we were first married, and we'd visit our families but then come home and have a drink, just the two of us,” she said in a way that made John very sure that she and her husband got up to other things, just the two of them. And why shouldn't they?

“Then there were the kids, and Christmas was so busy, we’d fall into bed exhausted,” she said. “But now they're grown, and we were hoping to have some Christmases where we could see them and come home, just the two of us, again.”

At that, John had smiled gently, thinking to himself how fortunate Mrs. Gardiner and her husband had been to have each other, even if it was cut short.

“Th thing is, Dr. Watson, I lie awake because I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don't know what Christmas is supposed to be like without him. I don’t know what I'm supposed to be like without him.”

John’s smile faded, because he knew exactly how that felt. He told her it probably didn’t help to hear it, but everything she was going through was normal, just one way grief could manifest itself. He gave her a prescription for a few weeks’ worth of sleeping tablets and a referral to a grief support group. He was surprised when she gripped his hand firmly and thanked him, saying, “You don’t know how much it helped, just having someone one listen to me.”

She was still on his mind when he entered the flat and found it empty, the lights on the tree turned off. He checked his phone but found no texts from Sherlock explaining where he went or asking John to meet him for a case.

John thought about rummaging through the fridge to find the makings of a meal, but it seemed like too much work. Instead, he pulled a bottle of Scotch and a tumbler from the cupboard and sat in his chair and looked at the tree Sherlock decorated for him.

This wasn't like when Sherlock was gone, he told himself. He hadn’t celebrated Christmas at all those two years, or at least, he'd done the minimum he could do to not draw attention from other people. Now there was a tree with handcuffs and bullet casings and fairy lights, there were gingerbread biscuits in a tin, there were gifts to wrap and exchange …

“John? John, why are you sitting in the dark?”

Shit. Sherlock had come in and John hadn't even heard him.

“No reason,” John said, rubbing his hands across his face. “Tired. Thinking.”

“And drinking,” Sherlock said, picking up the bottle and assessing how much was a left and how much had gone into John. “Let's turn on the tree to make it festive, and then you can tell me what you were thinking about.”

“It’s not very festive, Sherlock,” John said. “I really don't want to talk about it.”

“All right, I will,” Sherlock said. “It’s something that happened at the surgery, or possibly on the way home; before you arrived here at any rate. You are tired, so it was busy, but not excited or exhilarated or any of those things you’d feel if you succeeded in a challenge, so the day consisted of common complaints. That would make you groan when you sat down, but not sit in the dark with Scotch looking like your best friend died.”

Sherlock stopped and blinked.

“Oh. Something made you think about --”

“Yeah, Sherlock, but really, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I am sorry you were hurt, John. You know that. I didn’t see any other way, and I thought I had to do it to save your life.”

“I know that, Sherlock. Really, I do,” John said. “It wasn’t about that, anyway, or not exactly. I had a patient -- a woman, 50ish, widowed for 10 months -- and she was losing sleep and having a hard time coping, because she didn’t even know what her life was without her husband. And I knew exactly how she felt.”

Sherlock was sitting in his chair, elbows on his knees, his hands steepled in front of his face, while he regarded John. He was silent as John continued.

“I feel like an arsehole saying this, because I know what you were doing was dangerous and difficult, and you probably didn’t even have time to miss me,” John said. “But that first Christmas with you gone, I was still living here, but I couldn’t take it. Every day, I would wake up, and you wouldn’t be here. Your violin was here. Billy was here. Everything I looked at was you, but you weren’t there, and I didn’t know what to do. You picked me up when I was ready for the scrap heap, and you gave me a life I never could have imagined for myself, and then I was right back on the scrap heap. It was hard for me to get up in the morning and brush my teeth. Mrs. Hudson brought food up almost every day, and I would eat it, because I didn’t want to worry her any more than she already was. But it wasn’t her job to take care of me.”

“John --”

“No, let me finish. You wanted to talk about it. I moved out right after that Christmas, because I just couldn’t live with your ghost anymore,” John said. “I got this tiny flat in Camden. I wasn’t working. I decided that I had to do something or I wouldn’t make it to the next Christmas, so I started applying for locum work again. It took a few months, but I got a full-time job. I got a better flat. I hated it. It wasn’t ever what I wanted. But I got up and got dressed and went to work and ate. When it was Christmas again, I volunteered to work. I sent Harry a gift card to somewhere -- I don’t even know where. After work, I came home and thought about Mrs. Hudson and Molly and Lestrade and us in our flat and I know it was awkward and then Irene and it was awful, but I would have given anything to turn back time.”

“You forgot Jeanette,” Sherlock said, attempting humour.

“Yeah, well, I did then, too. Then there was Mary and all that. When you came back, I thought you were making fun of me, and we were engaged and I’d lost you again.”

John took another pull of his scotch, looked at the tree and said, “I listened to Mrs. Gardiner, and I was so grateful that we actually got another chance to have Christmas together. It’s been wonderful, with the snow and the food and the tree. This doesn’t happen when you’ve watched the most important person in your world die. But I was so fucking scared that it would happen again. I don’t know if I could start over. And I’m sorry to tell you all this, because I know you did what you thought best, but I’m so afraid of you leaving me behind again. What am I saying -- you almost did last year.”

By the time he brought his eyes back to Sherlock, Sherlock had fallen to his knees in front of John and was reaching out to take him by the shoulders.

“Never,” Sherlock said. “I won’t leave you like that again. John, I do understand. When I left, I knew that I might never come back, and I tried not to think of you too much. It was too distracting, to wonder how you were, if you’d moved on yet. Then I came back, and you weren’t here, and I tried to give you what you wanted, and I think I got it all wrong. And there were days I didn’t want to be here at all, because you weren’t here. I won’t leave you again, John, but please, please John, don’t leave me either.”

John moved to the floor and pulled Sherlock close, burying his face in the juncture between Sherlock’s neck and shoulder.

“Never,” John echoed. “I’m home to stay.”


	18. Day 18: Mistletoe

“Sherlock, what exactly are you doing?”

John had walked into the kitchen and stopped at the sight of Sherlock balanced on a chair which had been pulled into the doorway between the kitchen and sitting room.

“Decorating,” Sherlock said, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where he was screwing a small cup hook into the plaster.

“Are you putting a hole in the plaster? Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson will have our heads,” John said.

Sherlock made sure the hook was secure before he looked down. John’s expression was somewhere between “fond” and “exasperated,” and he looked as if a couple of paracetamol and tall glass of water would be welcome. He’d had quite a lot of scotch before Sherlock got home the night before. Exasperated seemed to be winning.

“You know as well I do that Mrs. Hudson is delighted that we have a Christmas tree, and I can only conclude that she would be in favor of further decoration,” Sherlock said. “It’s not as if it’s a bullet hole.”

“She’ll add it to our rent,” John said.

“No, she won’t,” Sherlock said. “The only time something so trivial would come into play would be if she wanted to rent the flat again. We’re not leaving any time soon. It’ll be long since forgotten.”

And oh, it felt good to say “we.” Now at least one thing was clear: John meant to stay. John saw this as his home.

John, clever John, seemed to pick up on Sherlock’s thought, because he repeated, “No, we’re not going anywhere. Tea?”

“Certainly,” Sherlock said. “Although you should have your paracetamol with water first. Many of the effects of a hangover are actually caused by dehydra --”

“Doctor, thanks,” John said, filling the kettle and then a glass. He turned the kettle on and then got two tablets from the paracetamol bottle, drinking the whole glass of water after he swallowed them. “God, I feel shite.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face -- an all-purpose gesture John employed when annoyed or distressed for any reason -- and said, “I can’t drink like I used to.”

“Or at least you can’t drink and leap out of bed the next morning like you used to,” Sherlock said. “You had quite a bit.”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” John said. “I didn’t mean to. But I was upset, and I was alone, and it felt a bit like you were gone again. I got through far too many bottles then. I’m sorry if I was maudlin.”

“Did you mean it?” Sherlock asked.

“What? That losing you meant losing myself? You knew that,” John said.

“No, that you’ll stay,” Sherlock said. “That you won’t move out to the suburbs with a pretty wife and spend your weekends watching the kids play football.”

John grimaced as he stood to pour the water for their tea.

“I think I’m done with the wife bit,” he said. “It didn’t work out so well.”

He took his mug and went back upstairs.

Sherlock bit his lip and looked at the desk where the mistletoe he’d procured from Mrs. Hudson was half-hidden behind a stack of newspapers.

Perhaps he had misread John?

Last night, they had embraced, on their knees between their chairs, for long minutes. John had tucked his face into Sherlock’s neck and Sherlock had murmured soothing words into John’s hair. John’s hands had clutched Sherlock’s shoulders, keeping him close, while one of Sherlock’s hands had stroked the soft hair at the nape of John’s neck.

It wasn’t sexual, but it seemed far beyond the boundaries of most platonic friendships, Sherlock thought.

Eventually, John had loosened his grip and settled back on his heels. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Christ, I’m a mess. I’m sorry for telling all this to you.”

Sherlock had moved back a bit, staying just close enough to stroke John’s knee. “Don’t apologize. Never apologize for talking to to me. The important thing is we’re home, yes? And we’re together.”

And after that, John had gone upstairs to his bed and Sherlock had lain awake in his bed and wondered if John would regret the intimacy, chaste as it was, in the morning, or if he would wish that their embrace had turned into a kiss had turned into hands on skin had turned into … well. He’d tried to stop thinking about it.

The important thing, he told himself, was that he and John were home, and together, and that was so much better than worrying that John would take himself off. But if he were honest with himself, he wanted more. He just wasn’t sure how to ask.

He picked up the mistletoe and a length of fishing line and mounted the chair again. He tied the mistletoe to the hook, in the center of the doorway from sitting room to kitchen, where it would be impossible to avoid without stepping into the corridor.

If John reacted badly, Sherlock theorized, he could play it off as a joke. John wouldn’t believe it, but it would allow them to pretend. If he reacted well, well, this would be a very nice Christmas indeed.


	19. Day 19: Christmas Songs

Sherlock froze when he reached the kitchen door.  
He’d heard the execrable music as soon as he woke, of course. John must actually have the radio on, or be streaming one of those stations that played nothing but Christmas music for the whole month of December. A radio station based in America.  
When Sherlock awoke, it was to the dulcet tones of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” By the time he pulled on his dressing gown and performed his morning ablutions, the music had changed to a dirge-like rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy.” Then, just as he was about to fetch tea, the pace changed again with “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”  
None of that was surprising. What held Sherlock fixed to the spot was John, bouncing (dancing? No, definitely bouncing) around the kitchen, using a wooden spoon to stir something in the bowl he held in the crook of his arm and occasionally taking it out to use as a microphone while he lip-synced with Brenda Lee.  
John had on a pair of old jeans, worn soft and thin in the seat and thighs, and his shirt hung loose from his shoulders, no doubt with a T-shirt underneath. Sherlock couldn’t tell what colour – John was facing away as he did his mixing dance, and Sherlock’s eyes could not leave his backside. The jeans hugged John’s arse and hips, which shimmied with the music in a way that should be ridiculous. But it really, really was not.  
John could feel Sherlock watching him. He’d heard Sherlock’s bedroom door open and the bathroom door close, and then he’d heard the bathroom door open again. He’d already flipped the kettle on, for Pete’s sake. When Sherlock stood in the doorway, eyes on John, instead of flopping into his chair and demanding tea, John suspected that the increasingly long looks he’d intercepted from Sherlock actually did meant something. When Sherlock didn’t seem to notice that John knew he was there – the kettle, Sherlock! I haven’t turned around in three minutes, Sherlock! – John threw himself into the performance even more.  
By the last verse, he was singing along, and as he belted out the last line – “A new, old-fashioned way!” – he turned his head over his shoulder and gave Sherlock a grin. For the first time in years, he actually felt happy.  
Sherlock’s cheeks coloured and he cast his eyes down, apparently embarrassed to be caught  
looking, so when the new song started, John held his spoon and crooned into it, facing Sherlock this time.  
“I’m dreaming tonight of a place that I love even more than I usually do …”  
After all, John reasoned, Sherlock couldn’t stay embarrassed when John was doing such a thorough job of embarrassing himself.  
“… I’ll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me. Please have snow, and mistletoe” (John looked up at the door to the sitting room) “and presents on the tree. …”  
The kettle clicked off and John kept singing as he poured the water into two mugs and set them on the table.  
“Christmas Eve will find me where the love-light glows ….”  
He ladled the batter he’d been stirring onto a hot skillet, and was flipping the pancakes as the song ended.  
“Have a seat,” John said. “Pancakes are ready, we finished a case yesterday and you are eating.”  
Sherlock sighed and spoke over the radio announcer reading an advertisement.  
“This is what you listen to when I’m not here to choose the music?” Sherlock said. “American commercial Christmas music?”  
“Well, you weren’t up to play your violin,” John said. “Besides, this music brings back good memories. The Yanks played stuff like this a lot at Camp Bastion around the holidays.”  
“So you have good memories of songs soldiers sang about home when they couldn’t be there?”  
Sherlock sounded dubious.  
“Something like that,” John smiled again, this time a bit wistful. “The Christmases in Afghanistan were always pretty good. They’d have special meals, and everyone would try to be festive and get along. There were no outsized expectations of family harmony and good-will, no disappointments. And if the soundtrack was music that was goofy or overly sentimental, so be it.”  
John shrugged.  
“I felt like I belonged there, like I was doing some good.”  
After they had eaten, or John had eaten and watched Sherlock push his pancakes around the plate, John did the washing up while Sherlock re-set the table with his microscope and a selection of plant spores for a study on which were most common in different areas of London. Sherlock tried not to be caught watching when John finished the dishes; this would be the moment he’d have to cross under the mistletoe. Sherlock had already had to wait nearly a day longer than he expected to; he and John had been called out the day before by Lestrade for a case involving a blue budgerigar and smuggled sapphires. It would probably be something along the lines of “A Study in Blue” on John’s blog. When Sherlock told him there was a case, John had clattered straight down the stairs from his room to the street door.  
Sherlock knew John had noticed the mistletoe; he thought it would bode ill if John simply walked through the door and ignored it. Saying something – even a joke – would be better, and lingering under it would be better still. Having John stand under the mistletoe and say, “Come here and kiss me, you genius” would be a bit too much to hope for.  
John foiled his plan again, announcing that they were almost out of milk and were completely out of bread and he was going to the shops. He once again avoided the mistletoe completely.  
As soon as John was gone, Sherlock took the leftover pancakes John had left on the worktop, drizzled a bit of honey on them, and considered. Perhaps he should linger under the mistletoe? But what if John ignored it then? Would it mean John was rejecting him, or just that John didn’t think Sherlock meant he wanted to kiss John? It didn’t matter. It would feel like a rejection. No lingering under the mistletoe for him.  
With John safely out of the flat, Sherlock crossed into the living room, rosined his bow, picked up the violin and began to play, always a soothing activity. He knew he couldn’t take the mistletoe down now; that would be to admit defeat. But he regretted putting it up in the first place. There were too many ways it could go wrong.  
He was still playing when John returned, hauling two heavy carrier bags up the stairs and depositing them on the table, nearly knocking over a stack of petri dishes in the process.  
“Oi, Sherlock, that’s lovely,” John said. “But do you think you could help me with these? Or at least move your experiment.”  
Sherlock took the violin from under his chin but didn’t put it down as he approached the kitchen to make sure John didn’t disturb anything important. John looked up, and in the next instant was standing in front of him, reaching up to place a gentle kiss on Sherlock’s cheek. “Mistletoe,” he said, looking up, and then gave Sherlock the biggest smile of the day so far.  
Bits of the smile lingered as John turned back to unpacking the groceries and said, “If you’re not going to help, Sherlock, keep playing, please? Maybe something from ‘The Nutcracker’? You don’t want to hear ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ again, do you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to the songs John hears:  
> [Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer](Grandma%20Got%20Run%20Over%20by%20a%20Reindeer)  
> [The Little Drummer Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6p5icEYBus)  
> [Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6xNuUEnh2g)  
> [I’ll Be Home for Christmas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pk-SLQPYJ0)  
> [All I Want for Christmas is You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXQViqx6GMY)


	20. Day 20: All Wrapped Up

John was an adorable child.

Sherlock flinched at the thought. He never used the word adorable.

But there was John in the photograph, a small John, towheaded, with an open, sunny expression.

He was outdoors, smiling from the top of a climbing structure on a playground. His knees were scabbed over, and he looked as if he were a king surveying his realm.

In the next picture he was a bit bigger, his expression a bit more shuttered. He and Harry stood before a Christmas tree. She was half a head taller and her jaw was thrust forward pugnaciously, as if daring anyone to try to hurt her little brother. Another picture, same tree, of John’s mother with her children. In this one, Harry’s expression had softened, but John looked more protective.

John as a teenager in rugby kit, knees still battered, hair a shade darker than when was a child, muscles visible under his uniform. He looked happy in this picture too, but it was different from the first ones. The openness was gone, replaced with the look of caution and alertness that Sherlock knew from his own time with John.

There was nothing that clearly indicated abuse or even an unhappy childhood, but Sherlock could read the story of a child learning that the world was not a safe and happy place, and that the ones who were supposed to love you were most dangerous of all.

John. It was a lesson the world -- Sherlock included -- seemed determined to teach John over and over again.

“So how is he?” Clara asked, returning to the table with two mugs of tea. “I never knew him well -- he was in medical school and then the army, so he wasn’t around much -- but I always liked him. When Harry left, she said she took all her things, but when I moved out I found these boxes with John’s name on them. I figured they’d be safer with me.”

“But you never got in touch to say you had them?” Sherlock made the statement into a question.

“I know I should have, really,” Clara said. “But I didn’t even know he was back in the country until months later, not until I saw something in the paper about you, I think. I looked up his blog to make sure it was the same person, but I never commented on it.”

“Because you didn’t want Harry to know? She wasn’t speaking to you after she left?”

“Or I to her,” Clara confirmed. “I never expected our clean break to be so, well, clean. It was kind of messy at the end. And she and John had been close. To call her brother out of the blue … Look, I kept the boxes. I was kind of relieved when you called.”

“You read the blog,” Sherlock said. “So you know what happened? At St. Bart’s? You should have called him. He always liked you too.”

Sherlock was suddenly nearly consumed with anger at all the people who failed John Watson. All the people who liked the man, who turned to him for care when they were broken, who relied on his steady competence in the most challenging of situations, and never thought to offer him support. People like him.

“Yeah. well. I’m not exactly a favorite of Harry’s, and I didn’t want to take on another Watson,” Clara said.

“You needn’t have worried,” Sherlock said. “They’re not close anymore. She didn’t even come to his wedding.”

“That’s right -- I almost forgot John was married,” Clara said. “I guess I always think of him being with you because of the blog.”

“Yes, well,” Sherlock replaced the lid on the box of photographs and stood from the table. “Thank you for keeping these. You did prove to be a more reliable caretaker than Harry Watson.”

Clara walked him to the door of the flat.

“And you’d be a more suitable partner for John than his wife,” she said. “It’s in every line of the blog. I’ve never seen anyone so gone on someone else. It wasn’t even this clear when he talked about his old CO, and Harry used to laugh at how gaga John was over him.”

Sherlock was still considering Clara’s parting words when he set the box down in 221C. He’d moved some equipment in here when John came home, and used the space for experiments that John might find distasteful. As such, it made the perfect hiding place.

First, John might say he was “not gay,” but he was far enough from perfectly straight that his sister wasn’t surprised by the object of John’s crush on Sholto, just by its intensity. Second, Clara, who had known John long if not too well, thought Sherlock would make a “suitable partner.” Third, John was “gone on” him.

The kiss under the mistletoe yesterday had been little more than the brief, gentle press of John’s lips to his cheek, but it had sent a mad tingle zinging through Sherlock’s central nervous system. Sherlock wanted more of that feeling. Did John want more too? If he wanted more, why hadn’t he taken it?

Still, Sherlock reasoned, John had crossed the room to bestow a kiss on him, however chaste. John had been looking for a chance to kiss him, and took it as soon as it came.

Sherlock inserted the first picture he had seen, of John in short pants with a wide smile at the park, into the silver frame he had bought on the way home, He inserted some of the others into ornaments that were meant to have pictures in them, and boxed them separately, and then he stowed the rest safely in the box.

He wrapped all three in heavy red paper and tied them with gold bows. He left the gifts behind his worktable and bounded upstairs, ready to pounce on John as soon as he could make him stand under the mistletoe.

As he climbed, he thought to to himself that he’d just have to get John under the mistletoe and see what would happen.


	21. Day 21: Christmas Shows/Specials

John stopped when he heard the familiar strains coming from the computer.  
“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas," Burl Ives sang.  
He’d been listening to Christmas songs on YouTube while he prepared another gift for Sherlock -- he was making ornaments for the tree out of periodic table blocks, after Sherlock had gone to all the trouble of making ornaments that reflected their lives together.  
The songs ended, and the next item to come up was Rudolph.  
He’d heard the song, or course, but he couldn’t remember seeing the video until he was hanging about with the Americans in Afghanistan, listening to their holiday music, watching their holiday videos in the mess.  
He remembered the show as seeming a bit, well, amateurish, with its 1960s animation, predictable plot and simple writing. It was a show made to sell a song, he had been told, but the GIs for some reason had not laughed at it. When it played in the mess or in the rec halls, there’d always be at least a few people watching it, reliving their childhoods.  
At the time, John had envied them. Now, John took a break from his work and watched.  
The story involved a misfit reindeer -- Rudolph, with a red lightbulb for a nose -- and an elf who wanted to be a dentist going off together to find a place where they would be accepted. The found the Island of Misfit Toys, and came back to Santa to ask for help, only to find that Santa needed Rudolph’s special talents.  
John smiled at the happy ending. It was a children’s story after all. He turned back to his project, gluing hangers on the blocks, each one bearing the chemical symbol for an element when his phone chimed.  
_Where are you? SH_  
Still at the surgery, John texted back.  
_You’re shift ended more than an hour ago. SH_  
I had some things to finish, John typed. Leaving in a few minutes. Do you need something?  
_Just want to know when you’ll be home. I’ll order takeaway._  
Get it from the Indian place, John wrote. I’ll pick it up on my way home.  
John chuckled as he got his coat on. He and Sherlock would be at home on the Island of Misfit Toys, he thought. Neither one functioned very well with the usual social expectations.  
He supposed that if he were to fit them into the movie, Sherlock would have to be Rudolph-with-his-nose-so-bright. John, according to Sherlock, was not luminous himself, although Sherlock said he was a good conductor of light. If Sherlock was Rudolph, that would make him Hermy the elf and would-be dentist. That made sense, John thought. Hermy just wanted to make people feel better.  
But then who would be the abominable snowman? Mycroft? And who would be Santa? Lestrade, offering work with real value to Sherlock?  
John got off the tube a stop earlier than usual to pick up the food, thinking that the movie paralleled his life more than he might have thought.  
He’d never felt he belonged growing up, always wanted something different. That’s why he joined the army, to get away, go somewhere new, find a place that felt right. And it did, at first. It did for a long time, actually. Until he was hurt and couldn’t stay there and was sent back, feeling more lost than when he left.  
But when he and Sherlock found each other, it was like he finally found where he fit. He thought it was the same for Sherlock, although they never talked about it. But he had seen and heard enough from people who knew Sherlock before to understand that John had changed him, most people thought for the better.  
He was humming the misfit song that Hermy sang when he made his way upstairs. Sherlock was looking at the door, watching for him after he heard him on the stairs.  
“What’s that?” Sherlock asked. “More terrible Christmas music?”  
“‘We’re a Couple of Misfits,’” John said.  
Sherlock blinked.  
“The song. It’s “We’re a Couple of Misfits,’” from an old American Christmas special,” John said. “I was listening to YouTube and it came up.”  
“That’s a Christmas song?” Sherlock asked, clearly unfamiliar with the story.  
“It’s about people who don’t fit in finding each other, and finding their way home,” John said, pulling his laptop toward him. “Here -- I’ll put it on while we eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch Rudolph on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2rg53E-vEc)


	22. Day 22: Snowed In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note rating change, due to drug use and John being a bit sweary.

The case was just what Sherlock had been waiting for.

It had been five days since he had hung the mistletoe between the kitchen and the sitting room, four days since John had kissed him.

And since then, nothing.

John had been working extra hours at the surgery, filling in for doctors who wanted time off for the holidays. Sherlock didn’t understand why; John had no need of working at the surgery at all, in his opinion. Between the money they made with the consulting detective business and his trust fund, there was more than enough money to support both of them.

But John insisted that he maintain some kind of medical career, and it was only good business to stay in the practice manager’s good graces by taking extra hours during Christmas week, he said.

“Besides, people who have families want to be with them,” John said. “It’s easier for me to work this time of year.”

Sherlock wanted to say, “But I want you to be with me. I want you to want to be with me.”

When John came home, he usually came directly into the kitchen to put down any groceries he brought with and make tea. He’d take his mug upstairs, change out of his work clothes, and then come back down to the sitting room. If he’d crossed directly under the mistletoe, it had been when Sherlock was out, or in his bedroom, or maybe even in the loo. Not when Sherlock could see him, and press a kiss to his forehead or cheek or his lips (did he dare?).

Maybe not, though. For John not to have walked through the door from the kitchen to the sitting room in five days had to be on purpose. John did not want to pass under the mistletoe; John did not want Sherlock to kiss him.

That was the thought that kept beating against the inside of Sherlock’s skull, so when he got a message from a man who wanted to find out what happened to his nephew, Sherlock jumped at the chance to get out of the flat. Without John.

It was better this way, Sherlock thought as he slithered into tight jeans and a snug T-shirt, then pulled a hooded sweatshirt over the top. The young man -- boy, really -- had been using drugs for a few months before he disappeared, and Sherlock would have to talk to people of whom John would definitely not approve.

He rubbed some mineral oil into the roots of his hair to make it look unwashed and headed out, leaving the Belstaff behind.

John trudged up the 17 stairs, grunting with fatigue. Sherlock’s coat was hanging in the hall and John hoped against hope that he had some kind of dinner. He’d stayed late to finish Sherlock’s ornaments -- he’d left them in the office for the last of the glue to dry -- but the day itself had been long and tiring and the tube crowded.

“Sherlock?” he called when he reached the top of the stairs, poking his head into the sitting room. It was empty, as was the kitchen. At least he could walk freely from one room to another, he thought. If Sherlock was in his room, John would let him be.

He knew Sherlock had been watching ever since he hung the mistletoe. He knew he was frustrating Sherlock by not passing under it. But he didn’t know what Sherlock meant by it. Not many people spent time in their flat besides them, except for Mrs. Hudson, and he didn’t think Sherlock would need mistletoe to give her a kiss on the cheek. The most likely reason was that Sherlock had deduced that John was attracted to him, and planned to take the piss. John would step under the mistletoe, Sherlock would swoop in for a kiss -- on his face? the top of his head? his mouth? -- and then if John’s face betrayed anything besides friendly good humour, Sherlock would have a good laugh at him.

John tried to forestall the problem by kissing Sherlock the day after the mistletoe went up. It really hadn’t been any more than a peck on the cheek, but even that made John want to get closer, to breathe Sherlock in, to taste his skin. John thought he’d carried it off as nothing more than an affectionate gesture, something that fit with the unusual intimacy of their friendship. John knew he wanted more, but he was fairly certain Sherlock didn’t do sexual relationships, and if he did, he could have anyone he wanted, not a divorced ex-army doctor. If anything, being seen with John so often probably helped keep people from hitting on him too much.

John settled in his chair with beans on toast and a cup of tea, ready to settle in with a paperback book and the tree lights twinkling, when the bell from the street door rang. It was probably for Sherlock, but if he ignored it, Mrs. Hudson would answer anyway. No reason to disturb her and her hip.

John opened the door to a man he had never seen before and a spotty teenage boy who looked like he needed some time to let whatever chemicals coursed through his veins clear out and a good meal or three.

“Is Mr. Holmes here?” the man said. “Noah showed up at home, so Mr. Holmes doesn’t have to look for him. I made him come to apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll still pay for whatever time he spent.”

“Uh, I don’t know, Mister ….”

“Robertson. Frank Robertson. This is my nephew, Noah.” That was accompanied by a gentle cuff to the back of the boy’s head, not intended to hurt, just to express exasperation. It didn’t matter -- the boy wasn’t in any state to notice.

“I don’t think he’s here, Mr. Robertson. I was actually wondering where he was,” John said, kicking himself for not checking Sherlock’s room. “I’m his flatmate, Dr. John Watson.”

Robertson looked he knew that, and he probably did if he’d found Sherlock on his own.

“I’ll let him know Noah turned up,” John continued. “You’re going to want to make sure he gets rest and food and plenty of fluid, and when he’s sober, you’re going to want to figure out some kind of rehab. If you need some referrals, let me know. You can email me through the website.”

“Thanks, Dr. Watson,” Robertson said. “Tell him thank you for us.”

John went back inside, saw the Belstaff again, and recalled finding Sherlock in a drug house, with matted hair and dirty tracksuit bottoms, about as high as young Noah looked.

John was going to kill him. Even if Sherlock hadn’t used again, just to put himself in that environment, by himself, to leave John behind with not so much of a text message … John thought they were past that.

He went inside to text Sherlock. Fifteen minutes later, when his message hadn’t been returned, he called, but it went right to voice mail. He tried the standard tracking program, but the phone was offline. His anger and concern fed off one another, and when Mycroft answered, he practically spit the words out.

“He’s gone, investigating a drug case, and his phone is off. Where is he?”

Mycroft, for once, didn’t try to dissemble. Of course Sherlock’s phone had GPS tracker on it that wasn’t standard and did not turn off when the phone did, and Mycroft was giving him an address in less than a minute.

Half an hour later, he stood in front of a building that looked all too similar to the one John had found him in the month after the wedding. He thought about calling Greg, but he wasn’t sure how the DI would react to Sherlock getting high. John considered a frontal assault -- that had worked to find Isaac -- but this situation was different. Sherlock hadn’t been in touch, and his phone was off. The hair on the back of John’s neck prickled. Stealth it was then, John thought, and headed for the rear of the building, looking for an unfastened window.

Sherlock tugged at the handcuffs that attached him to the bedframe. They were too tight to be pulled over his hands. Nothing to do but wait.

His phone and his wallet were on the table against the opposite wall, as was a large amount of white powder cocaine, divided into small baggies. Sherlock thought there might be close to a kilo there.

But it wasn’t cocaine, or at least not mostly cocaine. The goons who had caught him looking for the boy had dragged him into this basement room and forced him to snort a line at gunpoint. That way, they said, no one would believe his story. Then they saw who he was, and decided to keep him and ask the higher ups what to do.

The thing was, he wasn’t high. Or at least not as high as he should be. When he snorted the cocaine, he had been waiting for the rush, for his heart rate to go up, for the warmth to spread over his body, for his mind to come into crystalline focus. It didn’t happen, at least not like it should have.

His nose and throat felt numb, though. That meant the line was probably no more than maybe 20 percent cocaine. Benzocaine, he thought. The coke was mostly benzocaine, a dental anesthetic that had become popular as a cutting agent because of its numbing properties.

He would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all: he, the world famous consulting detective, the well-known former junkie, locked up in a room full of fake drugs, unable to tell anyone about what he found or where he was.

He should have told John. He should have at least left him a message saying where he planned to go, left a train for John to follow. He should have told John. He should have told John he loved him.

The door opened. Sherlock looked up, expecting to see the thugs coming back. If they beat him, he might be able to escape. But if they just shot him the head, that would be it.

A gun was the first thing through the door, but Sherlock’s eyes widened. He knew that gun. And he knew the hand that was holding it.

“John?” he said, and started to laugh. This was ridiculous, and if John was here to rescue him, it was also hilarious.

John propelled himself through the door as soon as he heard his name, shushing Sherlock as he reached him, holding Sherlock’s face in his hands, searching him with his eyes. “Jesus, Sherlock, are you high? Are you all right? What happened? What are you doing here?”

Sherlock tugged on the cuffs again, making them clank, just in case John had missed that he was bound to the bed frame. But he giggled at the same time.

“Can’t you see, John? I’m snowed in,” he said, looking pointedly at the baggies of powder.

“Good Christ, you are high, aren’t you?” John said, searching his wallet for the small handcuff key he carried. It had come in handy more than once. “Come on, I’ll get you out of here.”

“Not as high as I should be,” Sherlock said, sounding more like himself. “Once we’re out, call Lestrade. These idiots need to be arrested for their own safety; their own customers will turn on them when they realize how little actual cocaine is the the coke they’ve been selling. Just don’t let him get too close to me.”

John was rubbing the circulation back into Sherlock’s wrists.

“We’ll be long gone by the time he gets here,” John said. “By the way, the kid you were looking for turned up at home.”

“I know,” Sherlock said. “I sent him with one of my homeless network before I came back in to poke around.”

“You bloody idiot,” John said, and kissed him full on the mouth.

It was bliss. All Sherlock could think was that he wished his face wasn’t half numb.


	23. Day 23: All I Want for Christmas Is You

John sat in his chair, trying to write a blog post about the budgerigar case.  
He wouldn’t be writing about what happened yesterday. The fact that Sherlock had been high on cocaine could not get out. The notoriety that had come from returning from the dead had faded by the time everything happened with Moriarty, and Sherlock had come out of that looking like a hero. He’d been riding a public relations high for so long, the press would turn on him at any excuse.  
Blue. Both the budgie and the stolen gems were blue. Blue bling. Blue ice.  
John typed and deleted and typed and deleted, trying to come up with an idea that would catch his fancy and distract him from the detective currently sleeping it off down the hall.  
He’d kissed him. He’d been so relieved to find Sherlock, alive and relatively unscathed, that he’d kissed him. No mistletoe required.  
Sherlock hadn’t laughed. That was something. He hadn’t kissed back, either. He’d sat on the bed and blinked, and blinked, and then said, “Right. Lestrade?”  
John texted the DI with the address and some idea of what could be found, then the two of them had set about eradicating the more obvious signs of their presence from the room and slipped out through the same window John had used to get in.  
By the time they got home, Sherlock looked like he was feeling ill, and John was in no mood to get into a row, so he made toast, slathered it with Sherlock’s favorite honey and set it down with a cup of tea liberally sweetened with sugar.  
The food settled Sherlock’s stomach, and John had herded him to his bedroom and left him to suffer or sleep as he chose.  
John had gone to bed himself, but slept fitfully. He had kissed Sherlock, and he had tasted divine, but the tingling of John’s lips afterwards wouldn’t let him forget that the man had been drugged. And John still had no real idea what Sherlock wanted.  
He had given up on the blog and was sitting looking at the Christmas tree -- the pill bottle, the crutch, oh God the handcuffs -- when he heard the drag of fabric on the floor in the corridor. He turned in time to see Sherlock shuffle into the kitchen draped in a sheet and flip the kettle on.  
“You’re going to want some paracetamol with your tea,” John said.  
Sherlock started.  
“John! You were supposed to be at the surgery this morning,” he said.  
“I know,” John said, crossing into the kitchen, mistletoe be damned, and grabbing the paracetamol bottle from the cupboard. “How are you feeling?”  
“Not too bad, considering,” Sherlock answered.  
John interpreted that as “Bloody awful, but not yet dying,” and tipped two of the extra-strength capsules into his hand before filling a glass with water.  
“That should help with the aches,” he said. “Any cravings?”  
“You know I didn’t take it voluntarily,” Sherlock snapped. “It wasn’t like I wanted to.”  
“And I know that you’re an addict, and it isn’t like you can choose to have cravings or not,” John said. “How bad are they?”  
“Not bad enough that I’m going to go buy some,” Sherlock said, his earlier bite subsiding into mulishness. “You didn’t have to stay home and babysit me to keep me from using.”  
“That’s not why I stayed home,” John said. “I needed to make sure you were all right.”  
“I’m clearly fine, John,” Sherlock said. “You can go do your important job and make your money.”  
“I didn’t say you needed me here,” John said. “God forbid you need me. I said I needed to know you were all right.”  
Sherlock had the grace to look mildly abashed.  
“I am,” he said. “All right, that is. Really, there wasn’t much actual cocaine in what they gave me. And I think even you would agree that getting a bit high was better than having my brains splattered on the wall behind me.”  
John had paled at the thought. He recovered himself, shook his head and said, “That didn’t have to be the choice,” John said. “You could have waited for me. You could have at least texted me and let me know where you were going. But you shut me out -- again -- and put your life at risk -- again.”  
“But if I had told you I was going to talk to users and dealers to find Noah, you would have said no,” Sherlock said. “You always get tense when a case involves drugs, like I can’t be trusted to take care of myself.”  
“I give you Exhibit A,” John said, gesturing to Sherlock, looking ill and petulant at the same time.  
“And even if you didn’t set out to use, you made yourself vulnerable. You didn’t have to be there alone. Alone doesn’t protect you.”  
John started to leave the kitchen. Sherlock seemed well enough; maybe the surgery would want him for the last few hours of his shift. He had to pick up the gifts he’d left there for Sherlock anyway.  
“I didn’t think it would matter,” Sherlock said behind him, the words muffled. He was facing away from John, his head hanging. “I was angry because you didn’t want me to kiss you. I wanted to get out of the flat, and I wanted to be brilliant, and I didn’t think anything would happen.”  
“Wait … What?” John said. “I didn’t want you to kiss me?”  
Sherlock was silent and it took John a moment to remember the mistletoe.  
“You wanted to kiss me?” he asked. “That’s why you hung up the mistletoe? You don’t need mistletoe, you idiot. Come here and kiss me.”  
Sherlock turned and came to stand in front of John.  
“But why did you avoid the mistletoe then?” he said, not reaching out.  
“Oh, Sherlock, I thought you were going to laugh at me,” John said. “I thought that, with the ice skating and what happened in front of the tree you knew I wanted you, and you were going to make a joke out of it, maybe in some misguided attempt to deflect it and help me get past it. But I couldn’t take it if you laughed at me.”  
Now Sherlock reached up and cupped John’s face in his hands. “I’d never laugh at you, not over something important.”  
John managed to look incredulous and aroused at the same time. “Fifth of November? Sumatra Road?”  
Sherlock didn’t answer. He tilted John’s face up and brought their mouths together.  
This kiss was far more gentle than the one John had given Sherlock last night. John thought it was infinitely better as he felt Sherlock’s lips moving over his, slotting between his, Sherlock’s tongue just barely touching him, his tongue tasting the inside of Sherlock’s mouth.  
After a few moments, John pulled back and sighed. He rested his head in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, his arms around Sherlock and helping hold his sheet up.  
“This is what I wanted, Sherlock,” John said. “All I want for Christmas is you.”


	24. Day 24: St. Nicholas

Sherlock brought his gifts for John up from 221C while John was at the shops getting the ingredients for their Christmas dinner. He hesitated for a moment before storing them under his bed. He was trying to surprise John with them. If John spent the night in his bed, that might be a problem.  
Then again, if John spent the night with him, it wouldn’t really matter too much where John’s gifts were. He’d either see Sherlock putting them under the tree, or see the gifts. On balance, Sherlock thought, he’d rather the surprise be spoiled.  
John returned laden with bags; there had to be far too much food for just the two of them.  
“You wanted a proper Christmas dinner, and that’s what we’ll have,” John said. “But things like roasts and trifles aren’t really meant for two people, so maybe we can have Molly and Greg over for leftovers on Boxing Day?”  
Sherlock wasn’t sure he was ready to think about Boxing Day yet. Somehow, this Christmas had become important to him. Until now, for most of his life -- very early childhood excepted -- he had railed against the idea that any arbitrary date on the calendar was more important or more magical than the others. Christmas and every other holiday were simply social and cultural constructs, designed to reinforce community values and bind people together. And until this year, he would have agreed with Mycroft that the main message of Christmas was the importance of spending money.  
This year, though, Christmas meant John, drinking hot chocolate and decorating and eating gingerbread. It meant snowball fights and skating hand in hand. It meant confessions of sentiment and kisses. It recalled the home of his boyhood, and offered another chance to make a home with John, and to do it right this time.  
Sherlock wondered how he got such a gift; he certainly didn’t deserve it.  
“Sherlock! Sherlock, are you in there?”  
John’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Sherlock turned away from the tree.  
“I was saying that if we’re going to have the trifle tomorrow we should at least make the custard now,” John said. “I had a look at the instructions and it doesn’t seem that difficult, but if you’ve actually done it before, maybe you should do it.”  
Sherlock thought back. Had he made custard as a child? Perhaps not on his own, but he had helped. At least he knew what it should look like when it was done.  
“I’ll do the custard if you slice the oranges,” Sherlock said. “Toss them with the berries and a little brandy, and they’ll be ready to use by the time the custard is.”  
Sherlock put the milk on the hob while he whisked the egg yolks and other ingredients and John set his computer to play holiday music again before cutting the oranges. When John finished, he put his knife and the cutting board in the sink and gathered the dishes Sherlock has already used, tidying around them. He found the last few gingerbread biscuits still in a container on the worktop, by now as hard as rocks.  
They were still entertaining, if gruesome, and he hunted in the drawer until he found string.  
“I don’t think anyone’s going to eat these anymore,” John said, “so I’ll hang them on the tree. Especially this guy here.”  
John held up a gingerbread version of a man who had been hanged, and proceeded to the sitting room when Sherlock chuckled. He passed directly under the mistletoe, and Sherlock made a note that he -- owed John? was entitled to? -- one kiss. The language of giving and taking kisses eluded him. It didn’t matter. As soon as the custard was cooling in the fridge, he and John could kiss again. They could kiss in front of the Christmas tree, with fairy lights reflecting in John’s hair, and then maybe they could kiss more in Sherlock’s bedroom. Or maybe John’s -- Sherlock wasn’t particular -- but Sherlock’s room was both closer and had a bigger bed.  
The custard put away, Sherlock went to stand behind John and wrapped his arms around him as John hung the last of the gingerbread victims on the tree.  
“I was thinking that maybe we should have made some gingerbread murderers too,” John said. “But the victims are the important ones, aren’t they?”  
Sherlock made a sound that might have been agreement and turned John in his arms.  
“You walked under the mistletoe,” he said. “Can I kiss you?”  
John responded by rising to his toes and kissing Sherlock before saying, “You can always kiss me, I told you. It doesn’t have to be because of the mistletoe.”  
Sherlock kissed him again, because his face was still right there, and then he indulged his curiosity about what the different parts of John’s face tasted like. His forehead was a bit salty, he thought, and the texture different from the curve of his ear. His jaw was rougher, and smelt of shaving cream.  
“John,” Sherlock said as he pulled away, “I want to taste all of you. Is that all right?”  
“That’s lovely,” John said. “I want to taste and touch all of you too. Bedroom?”  
So Sherlock led John to his bed, and they lay down only a foot or two above the memories of John’s childhood that Sherlock planned to give back to him, and slowly removed clothes and exposed skin and kissed and licked and stroked and kneaded and pulled.  
Sherlock surprised John by not lingering over John’s scar, but he had caught glimpses of it before, and he knew John was self-conscious about it.  
John surprised Sherlock by reverently kissing first the scars on his back and then the one on his chest, put there by Mary’s bullet.  
“I’m sorry,” John said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, and I’m sorry you had to endure so much to get back to me.”  
“Hush,” Sherlock had said. “We’re here now.”  
Their touches and kisses became greedier and more frantic, and before long Sherlock was spilling over John’s hand. Minutes later, John reached his own climax, his hand wrapped around Sherlock’s on his cock.  
Minutes after that, they both dozed in Sherlock’s bed, waking up in time for a meal of takeaway and wine. Sherlock played for a while, and when he stopped, John said, “I’m going to bring your gifts up and put them under the tree now, before we go to bed. That way we can open them first thing.”  
“Then I’ll play St. Nicholas as well,” Sherlock said, heading to his room as John clattered down the stairs to where he had hidden the gifts in Mrs. Hudson’s flat.  
Two large boxes for Sherlock and several of varying sizes for John were under the tree when they turned off the lights and walked together to Sherlock’s room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find the trifle recipe [here](http://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a32428/raspberry-almond-trifle-recipe-ghk1211/).


	25. Day 25: Christmas morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it!  
> I had so much fun!

Sherlock awoke to warmth, stretching and luxuriating in loose-limbed comfort between the smooth sheets before opening his eyes..  
There was another body -- there was John -- in his bed. John was still asleep, half curled on his side, facing Sherlock. The lines had dropped from his face, and he looked years younger. His sandy lashes fanned across his cheek, and Sherlock resisted the temptation to brush a fingertip through them.  
Instead, he looked. He looked at the way the sun glinted on John’s hair, the silver among the gold glinting in the morning light. He looked at the scar on John’s shoulder, which he had avoided as much as possible the day before because he knew John didn’t like it. He felt a small pang that he couldn’t see the scar from the exit wound on the back.  
He looked at the dusting of hair on John’s chest, and the flat nipples. He imagined the hair trailing lower from John’s abdomen, and thought about pushing the duvet down just a bit.  
He was still thinking about when John stirred, a shiver of tension coming into his muscles a moment before he opened his eyes.  
John’s eyes shone clear and the skin around the crinkled when he smiled. “Happy Christmas, Sherlock,” he said. “Come here.”  
Sherlock scooted closer to embrace John and kissed him gently on the forehead. John returned the kiss on Sherlock’s jaw and pulled Sherlock close enough that Sherlock could feel their bodies pressed together. John was half-hard, and Sherlock’s penis began to stir at the sensation.  
John kept kissing him, from his jaw to behind his ear. He stopped to suck briefly on Sherlock’s earlobe before working his way down his neck.  
John rolled them so Sherlock was on his back, John half-covering him, when he looked up and said, “You don’t know the thoughts I’ve had about this neck.”  
Sherlock’s hands had come up and were stroking John’s back and arms -- any part of him he could reach, really -- and he lifted his head and said, “You don’t know the thoughts I’ve had about you kissing me.”  
“Yeah?” John said. “Where did you think about me kissing you?”  
“Everywhere,” Sherlock said.  
“I’ll have to see what I can do,” John said, continuing his path down Sherlock’s body.  
Sherlock was fully erect by the time John’s mouth was level with his groin, and John took a moment to plant quick kisses at the base of his penis and on his testicles, nosing at him and inhaling all the while.  
He looked up again and said, “May I?”  
“God, yes,” Sherlock answered, and John sucked the tip of Sherlock’s penis into his mouth. It didn’t take long after that -- John worked his way up and down the shaft, and did impossible things with his tongue, and teased his testicles and perineum with his hands -- before Sherlock was tugging at John’s hair and saying, “John, I’m going to --”  
John sped his ministrations up, working to swallow the semen that spurted into his mouth and licking Sherlock clean. Then he pushed his way back up and kissed Sherlock deeply, letting him taste himself in John’s mouth.  
John’s erection was bumping against Sherlock’s hip, and Sherlock reached for it, stroking and pulling until John came on Sherlock’s stomach.  
“Happy Christmas indeed,” Sherlock said, drawing his fingers through the mess and sucking on them.  
John stared.  
Then he said, “I have to get up now or I may never get out of this bed. You want the first shower while I do the tea?”  
Twenty minutes later, they were in the sitting room wearing pajamas and dressing gowns, hands curled around mugs, looking at the gifts they had placed under the tree the night before.  
John looked a bit shy, Sherlock thought, which seemed odd given what John had done that morning.  
Sherlock decided to take the first step, picking up the biggest box and handing it to John.  
“Open this one first,” he said.  
John pulled the ribbon off and neatly undid the tape, pulling the deep red paper off the box. When he opened the lid, he was greeted by a herd of reindeer worked in wool, prancing between bands of red and green. John startled and barked a laugh.  
“I am sorry about your jumper,” Sherlock said. “I know this doesn’t replace it, but you needed a Christmas jumper.”  
John pulled it out of the box to hold it up and spied the other jumpers underneath. There were three, in the muted colors John preferred, soft and warm and made to show his features to their best advantage.  
“Sherlock, they’re lovely,” he said. “These must have cost a fortune.”  
“Just use them to replace some of your truly awful jumpers,” Sherlock said, but gently.  
“Your turn,” John said, and handed Sherlock one of his boxes.  
Sherlock hadn’t touched the gifts yet, and he was surprised by how heavy it was. And it rattled with the sound of wood.  
He opened the box to find a set of wooden blocks, carved and painted with chemical information from the periodic table, one element per block.  
“There are only 36 blocks,” John said. “And they’re kind of the best-known elements. But I liked them. I added the hangers so we can put them on the tree.”  
“They’re … really good,” Sherlock said. “I have some things for you to put on the tree too, but open these first.”  
He handed over a small stack of presents, topped with a flat box.  
John opened it to find a sleek silver frame. The photo was himself, at about age 6, with skinned knees and a wide smile, atop the climbing frame at the playground.  
“Sherlock, where did you get this?” John said. “I thought Harry had it -- or at least, she had it after mom died -- but if you’d seen her flat you wouldn’t think she’d still have them.”  
“Clara had them,” Sherlock confirmed. “She said she regretted not getting in touch sooner.”  
“Yeah, well, I could have reached out to her, too,” John said. “The rest of these are my pictures?”  
“I put a few of them in those photo frame ornaments,” Sherlock said. “I wanted the tree, the whole flat really, to look like it was your home.”  
“Do you know what your last gift is?” John said. “I really tried to keep it a surprise. I even went to the library to order it online.”  
That clicked, and Sherlock remembered the unscheduled trip to the library. John hadn’t wanted him to know because he was trying to surprise him.  
“Here, open it,” John said.  
This box was heavy, too, and it proved to be filled with books, classics of the true crime genre. Sherlock had read most of them, but they would make a striking addition to the shelf.  
At the bottom was a slim book bound in rich leather.  
“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Dr. John H. Watson” was embossed on the cover.  
Inside were printed versions of many of John’s blog posts, but before he looked at them, Sherlock read the handwritten note on the flyleaf.  
“Dear Sherlock,  
I put this book together so you could see yourself through my eyes. I wanted you to see how brilliant and amazing and kind you are, and yes, how infuriating you can be at times. It seems that everyone who reads the blog knows how I feel about you, and I wanted you to see that too. If it it’s not clear enough from the stories, Sherlock, I love you.  
Happy Christmas,  
John”

**Author's Note:**

> I can't promise every day, but I'll try. They'll also be posted to my Tumblr at [JustLookFrightened](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/justlookfrightened).


End file.
